Shades of Grey
by Morgane
Summary: The arrival of the new Dada teacher, a former Hogwarts graduate, brings forth old scars, some doomed obsessions, many interesting facts about Snape and Lily and a fair amount of new tragedy (COMPLETE)
1. A brandnew Circle of Hell

TITLE: Shades of Grey  
AUTHOR: Morgane  
EMAIL: salzkartoeffelchen@web.de  
DISCLAIMER: If I told you that I owned Harry Potter, would you actually believe me?!  
IMPORTANT: this is my very first Harry Potter fic so please show leniency towards a poor non-native speaker!  
SUMMARY: The arrival of the new Dada teacher, a former Hogwarts graduate, brings forth old scars, some doomed obsessions, many interesting facts about Snape and a fair amount of new tragedy. The story takes place in Harry's fifth year but I choose to ignore Voldemort´s ascent in book 4. For me he is still in the "I-prepare-to-rise-again-in-order-to-kill-the-  
insufferable-Potter-and-yadda-yadda-yadda"- Phase  
RATING: will still increase =^_~=   
FEEDBACK: I crave it like I crave coffee and chocolate!!   
DEDICATION: This goes to Isidra, my demonic twin and favourite bunny, who is entirely to blame for my writing this story   
  
  
Chapter 1: A brand-new Circle of Hell  
  
"I don't know how it could become any worse", Ron Weasley stated around a mouthful of carrot cake. "First a stuttering clown who secretly shares his body with you-know-who, then the most high-handed idiot the world has ever seen, after that a werewolf and as a culmination a former Deatheater. I really don't see how they could top that."  
  
"Just one word", Harry at his side returned darkly while stirring in his pudding. "Snape."  
  
It was the first day after the holidays and like nearly all the rest of Hogwarts the two friends were busy disputing the tricky question who would be their next teacher in Defence Against the Dark Arts while enjoying the usual exquisite start-of-term feast. The Great Hall looked its usual splendid self with uncountable golden plates and goblets gleaming in the light of hundreds and hundreds of candles floating over the tables in midair but like most of the students the two were too deep in their discussion to worship the beauty like usually.  
  
The red-haired boy shuddered visibly at Harry's latest remark. "Err...right." Then he shook his head. "By the way, where's the greasy bastard anyway? Haven't seen him yet."  
  
Harry scanned the table where the teachers were sitting more carefully; Professor McGonagall, judging from the thin line of her lips once more angered by the Divination Teacher at her side, Flitwick arguing with Sprout and Sinistra of the Astronomy department, and - his face brightened - Dumbledore, looking as wise and congenial as ever...but no Snape. "Perhaps he quit", he stated hopefully although not really believing in this hypothesis.  
  
Ron sighed deeply. "Too good to be true."  
  
"If only his absence does not mean that he was chosen to take Moody´s place, it really doesn't matter to me." The green-eyed boy twisted his face in disgust. It was common knowledge that the Potion Master wanted the Defence Against the Dark Arts job for himself - most probably because it was the ideal subject to torture students without getting trouble from aurors or ministers of magic.  
  
"Dumbledore wouldn't let him!" His friend returned with great certainty. Then he frowned, his round blue eyes suddenly widening in worry. "He wouldn't, right? Oh Merlin, he simply can't do that!"  
  
"Well, there are not many people who still want the post", Hermione at Harry's side joined the conversation, her face expressing the same mixture of disgust and worry as Ron's. "It is already said to bring back luck. The Daily Prophet even published an article on the topic of the short-lasting existence of Hogwarts´ DADA teachers last week."   
  
As the two boys just stared at her dumbfounded, she rolled her eyes and laid her spoon neatly next to her plate. "Honestly, don't you ever read?"   
  
But before any of the two could answer, the buzz of chatter, which had filled the hall before, ceased at once. The Headmaster has gotten to his feet.  
  
"And there comes the answer to all our questions", Ron muted before quickly turning his attention towards the old man, who smiled cordially around them all.   
  
"Ladies and Gentlemen, first of all, welcome you back in Hogwarts", Dumbledore let his wise blue eyes wander around his little herd. "Since you would not listen to me anyway, I won't bore you with wishes for a quiet and peaceful year but nevertheless there are a few things I'd like you to pay your attention to. Like every year, I would like to remind you that the Dark Forest is out-of-bonds for all students, as is the village of Hogsmeade to all below third year. Now, before Mr Filch reads his list of items banned on school grounds - over 500 by now, I hear - I shall come to the point, everybody here is most interested in", the corner of his mouth twitched, "the new teacher for Defence Against the Dark Arts."  
  
If this were possible, it became even quieter in the hall.   
  
A merry light appeared in the Headmaster's eyes as he made a dramatic pause, enjoying the curious glances of his children. "I am very pleased to inform you that a former Hogwarts graduate has kindly consented to fill the post."  
  
"Oh no", Ron whimpered, ignoring Hermione´s frantic "Shhhh!". "Oh, please no! Not him!"  
  
But he was not the only one who found his heart stopping at Dumbledore´s words. Also Harry was holding his breath, waiting for the fateful words that would decide whether his fifth year at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry would be a total disaster or not. Dumbledore opened his mouth, coughed two times and suddenly revealed the name: "Professor McGregor!"  
  
The silence that had filled the hall ever since the Headmaster stood up, suddenly broke with loud jubilation and the grumbling of some Slytherins.  
  
"Not Snape! NOT SNAPE!" Ron sang cheerfully. "Oh, this is the happiest day of my life!"  
  
"McGregor", Hermione murmured, ignoring her friend's outburst completely. "The name doesn't tell me anything. She isn't mentioned in..."  
  
As his friend began to enumerate a long list of books Harry had never before heard anything about in his life, the boy turned his attention back to Dumbledore, who was visible not done with his speech but waiting silently for his students to calm down again. And indeed, as he got the attention back, he continued, "Professor McGregor has been living in Ireland for a couple of years and has just come back to England. I expect all of you to give your new teacher a very warm welcome here at our school."  
  
"We would if he were here", George Weasley retorted loudly, which caused a storm of laughter in the hall.  
  
Even Dumbledore chuckled appreciatively. "A good point, Mr Weasley," he remarked good-humouredly. "Well, your statement shows me that I have to clarify two facts. First, Professor McGregor decided to take the bus to Hogsmeade, which is by the way also the reason for Professor Snape´s absence this evening for he kindly agreed to catch her there."  
  
"Poor guy can be lucky if he arrives here in one piece", Ron murmured darkly.   
  
"Second, Professor McGregor is not a `he´, but a ´she´ or to be more specific one of the greatest witches Slytherin had brought forth in the last years..."  
  
Once again he couldn't continue with his speech because of a new tumult in the hall.  
  
"A WOMAN? A WOMAN teaching DADA?!"  
  
"But there had never been a female teacher in Defence Against the Dark Arts!"  
  
"Why the bloody hell must it be a Slytherin?!"  
  
"Exactly! Why didn't they got us a snake from the beginning on?"  
  
"That would have been kinder, no question!"  
  
Obviously Dumbledore still wanted to add something, but regarding the sudden tumult in the hall, he just shook his head in amusement and sat down, probably doubting that he would get any more attention this evening.  
  
"Isn't this great?" Hermione beamed. "A woman teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts. It must be the first one Hogwarts has ever seen! That's a revolutionary step for the emancipation of witches!"  
  
In response Ron only rolled his eyes. "Last year it were the house-elves, this year it is emancipation", he mocked her. "I wonder if you and Hagrid will found a "Save the dragons" club in sixth grade?!" As she elbowed him in mock anger, he only grinned good-naturedly, before turning back to Harry. "About what I said earlier, I was wrong. A Slytherin easily tops incompetents, werewolves and minions of evil."  
  
"At least it isn't Snape", Harry returned warily. "I doubt that she can be any worse than him."  
  
"You don't even know her yet!" the bushy haired girl at his side interrupted them high-handedly. "I would never have considered you that prejudiced!"  
  
"Prejudiced?! For Merlin's sake, she's a Sly, Hermione! Did ever come anything good out of this house?" Ron twisted his face in disgust. "I mean just look at that little chit over there."  
  
Harry and Hermione turned in unison just to see Draco Malfoy grinning evilly at them from the other side of the hall. Obviously he was more than just pleased with the news about the new teacher.  
  
"Well?" Ron asked.  
  
Hermione just shrugged his shoulders, annoyance shining in her eyes. "That doesn't have to say anything. Right, Harry?"  
  
But in spite of supporting her, the black haired boy suddenly grinned mischievously. "I only wonder how she and Snape will get along."  
  
Ron's expression matched his easily. "You mean you wonder what is stronger: Slytherin bonds or good, old envy?" He began to chuckle evilly. "With a bit of luck they will finish each other off and the world has two Slytherins less to worry about."  
  
"Will you two stop that nonsense?!" Hermione demanded angrily and stood up. "Why don't we simply go to the common room and enjoy the evening? We will see this Professor McGregor soon enough!"  
  
"Enjoy the evening? In the common room?" The red haired Weasley faked shock. "Hermione, is that really you? I had expected to head towards the library the very moment the meal is over!"  
  
Rolling her eyes, the girl choose to ignore him. "Well, Harry?"  
  
Harry wrinkled his face. "Sorry, I can't. Angelina has arranged a meeting of the Quidditch team after the meal."  
  
His friend rose an eyebrow. "On the first evening? Is it just me or do all Gryffindor´s Quidditch Captains tend to be fanatics?"  
  
He just rolled his eyes. "That's beyond me."  
  
********************************************************************************  
  
Harry hastened through the empty corridors, his black robe billowing behind him. Angelina, the team's new captain, had chosen to copy Oliver's old start-of-term-speech ("We will train more often and much harder! We will train in rain, snow and thunderstorms!! I don't want you to concentrate about anything but Quidditch this year!!!") but somehow managed the unbelievable and made it even longer than Wood ever had. By the time she had finally come to an end, the rest of Hogwarts had already vanished in their own chambers long ago so that the school now laid grave and silent before the boy who couldn't wait himself to get into his bed.  
  
He was just about entering the Gryffindor tower, when a painfully familiar voice suddenly made him stop dead in his tracks. "I have no hope for any of these pathetic creatures I have as students", he heard the owner of that voice explaining loudly. "The majority show themselves not even remotely competent in the realm of Potions, and the rest owes their achievements to dumb luck!"  
  
Harry's eyes narrowed. Was this... Carefully he glanced around the corner and caught sight of Snape, walking side to side with a slender blonde in a silver-grey robe.   
  
The boy found himself staring at them with open mouth before feeling himself turning redder than even Ron's hair. The stranger was by any means the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life. Small-waisted, tall and slender, she kept up with Snape´s long steps with effortless grace, obviously not irritated at all by his lament. Long blond hair fell in accurate curls over her shoulders, gleaming in the dim light like pure gold around the pale and satin textured skin of a sculptured face with broadly spaced but delicate cheekbones and very clear cobalt blue eyes. Although probably in her companion's age, there was something unnerving sweet, almost kittenish about her expression that made her look like a mischievous young girl, barely older than last year's graduates.   
  
Was this the new DADA teacher?!   
  
Curiously he approached them, trying to overhear more of their conversation.  
  
The blonde was smiling appeasingly at the Potion Master right now. "Don't forget how young they are", she reminded him in a melodic voice that reverberated softly in the long corridor. "They are still children."   
  
Snape snorted. "That's no excuse for incompetence."  
  
Shaking her head, his companion began to laugh, the sound as clear as a thousand crystal bells shattering on cold stone. "By Merlin, Sev, don't you think that you over dramatize things a bit?"  
  
Sev?!  
  
But most obviously the Potion Master didn't mind the nickname for he only shook his head in rough denial at her latest question. "I swear, Morrigan, these children are sent by the gods of hell to test my patience", he returned darkly. "It is as if they get just a small bit worse every year. And after the holiday they have usually forgotten already what little they have learned as well as that small grain of common sense that may have redeemed them."  
  
Harry's eyes widened more and more. Did his eyes play an evil trick on him or was Snape actually befriending the new DADA teacher?  
  
Eager to hear more of this weird dispute, he moved nearer towards them, not noticing the little Merlin statue he was approaching with this action before it felt to the ground with a loud bang.  
  
Uh uh.  
  
Looking up, he found him eye to eye with a glaring Snape.   
  
"Potter! What are you doing here at this time?" the Potion Master snapped, his voice heavy with unspent venom. The black eyes eyed him with the usual mixture of loathing and disgust as a mean smirk appeared on the thin lips. "Wanting to get yourself into trouble already on the very first evening I suppose?"  
  
Harry bit back the sharp response which was laying on his tongue. "No Professor, we just had a meeting of the Quidditch Team", he answered shortly, hoping not to cost his house any points on his very first evening. Although he had done nothing bad, there was no chance to predict what Snape would do with him after being caught when acting nicely - or however one would call this in his case - with a colleague he was supposed to hate.  
  
Indeed the black eyes of the Potion Master already glimmed evilly. But before he could say whatever nasty remark he had in mind, the blonde at his side suddenly gasped. "Potter?" she asked breathlessly. "Harry Potter?!"   
  
Elbowing Snape out of the way, she rushed towards him and suddenly Harry found himself confronted with the most enchanting eyes he had ever seen in his life, deep blue like sapphires, instantly vulnerable and warm with empathy, but also telling of quick wit and high intelligence while possessing an unnerving knowledge that suggerated to see straight to the heart of things. "Erm...", he stuttered when the woman's lips suddenly began to quiver as if she was on the verge of crying. "Sorry...err...I...", he broke up as she touched his face with trembling hands, obviously overwhelmed by something she found there.   
  
What had he gotten himself in _now_?  
  
"Your eyes", she suddenly whispered hoarsely, staring at him with unconcealed movement. "Good Merlin...just like Lily's."  
  
Her last sentence made Harry regain his senses in a flash. "You knew my mum?" he asked incredulously.  
  
At this she blinked, before a deep flush of red appeared on her delicate cheeks. "Oh, sorry!" Letting go of him as if the touch had burned her, she stepped back, her lips pressed together in a hard line. "You must consider me to be utterly insane."  
  
"He wouldn't be too wrong to do so", Snape grumbled but shut up instantly as the blonde cast a short glance in his direction.  
  
When she turned back to him, the sweet smile had found itself a way back on her face although her eyes were still veiled by something Harry couldn't quite named. For a moment the boy thought, she was about to touch him again, but then her hand balled itself to a fist, refusing to give in its desire another time. "I think I should introduce myself first", she began firmly, obviously trying to save the rest of her dignity. "My name is Morrigan McGregor. I suppose Professor Dumbledore has already told you about me being the new teacher for Defence Against the Dark Arts?"   
  
Harry nodded, his eyes widening in sudden understanding. "He said that you were in Hogwarts yourself", he said slowly. "Is that why you know my parents?"  
  
The corners of her lips quirked. "As I see, you are as clever as your mum", Flipping a curl of her golden hair out of her face she pointed at Snape, surprising Harry with a sudden teasing twinkle in her sparkling eyes; obviously her moods could change with frightening speed. "Indeed, I was a classmate of James and Lily just like this grumbling fellow here."  
  
The Potion Master shot a murderous glance at her that would have led others to lose the power of speech, but the new Professor only smiled mildly at him. "I suppose you haven't told him anything, have you?"   
  
"He never asked", Snape returned icily.  
  
The blonde snickered, but the sound was not unkind. "Don't fool me, Sev, I know you far to well to fall for this. You have probably been acting like a jerk around the poor boy all the time, so how was he supposed to guess?"  
  
"And you don't even know this brat, Morrigan!" Snape shot back. "The only things he shows interest in are Quidditch and breaking every bloody rule he can think of! So why should I have wasted my precious time on him!"  
  
"Your precious time? Oh I see, sitting in a dungeon and brewing stinky little solutions will probably change world history!"   
  
"As I see you are still the same annoying, flighty..."  
  
"What didn't Professor Snape tell me?" Harry interrupted them before the two could forget completely about him. His heart beat heavy in his chest. "And how is my mum connected to this? What's this all about?!"  
  
The shining blue eyes returned their attention to him, a sparkle of mischief apparent in them by now. "Potions", she answered simply, the merriment in her voice even more genuine now, before she began to giggle. "Severus' only virtue, your mother's only failing."  
  
As the boy only stared at her uncomprehending, Snape sneered impatiently. "She means that your mother was a dismal failure at Potions so that I was forced to tutor her," he explained bluntly. "A brilliant student in all other areas, that I won't deny her, but completely incompetent when it came to brewing even the simplest solutions." He snorted. "The only person who eventually tops her in incompetence is your friend Mr Longbottom."  
  
Harry felt his face heating and had already a scathing retort ready on the tip of his tongue when Professor McGregor gave the Potion Master a fierce slap on the head. "Don't be a jerk, Sev," she snapped surprisingly sharp before turning back to a now wide-eyed Harry, her expression cordial again. "Well, long story short, in the end, Severus had to tutor us both, your mother and me, because I wasn't much better than Lily, and we three somehow got friends."  
  
Harry felt like being hit by a ton of bricks. Unbelievingly he stared at the blonde, his green eyes widened, but her expression spoke of total honesty.  
  
His mother and Snape, his mother and the greasy bastard whose fiercest wish was to have him expelled from Hogwarts had been friends?!  
  
He couldn't help glancing towards Snape who did likewise in the very same moment so that deep pools of endless night met with brilliant green eyes for a mere instant. If it were not for his bitter and more-than-just-nasty Potions Professor, Harry would have sworn to see something like the faintest hint of grief in their depths, but Snape broke the eye contact nearly at once, judging from the hard line of his mouth angry about himself.  
  
The silence was becoming awkward already, when Professor McGregor decided to break it with her bell-like laughter. "Well, you are not the only one who reacted this way, Harry", she remarked, wrinkling her nose girlfully. "Two Slytherins and a muggleborn Gryffindor, it had been kind of a shock to the entire school. I remember a bunch of people telling Lily that she had gone completely sack to hammers, but your mother has always made her own choices, ignoring how the rest of the world judged them." Her eyes softened. "She was a very special person, Harry."  
  
Harry felt the eyes behind his glasses burn deceitfully. "And how..."  
  
"Morrigan, we have to go", Snape interrupted his question abruptly, shooting a frightening dark glance in the boy's direction. "Albus said that he wanted to meet you the very minute you arrived and I don't see why you should waste your time with a student you shall see every day for the next two years from now on."  
  
"Ever the same old Severus." She smiled somehow wistfully, before turning her attention back to Harry, her eyes warm with obvious affection again. "If you ever want to know something more about your mum, I would gladly tell you - and I'm sure that Severus here would do likewise."   
  
Harry glanced to Snape, adjusting from the murderous look on his face that his title would soon be changed to "The Boy Who Lived Only To Be Killed By His Potions Master" if he ever thought of accepting this offer. "Thank you", he finally found his voice back. "I look very forward to it."  
  
"So do I." Professor McGregor gave him a last parting smile. "See you tomorrow in class."  
  
"See you", Harry returned, feeling how a brand-new circle of hell was entering his life. 


	2. Pride, Prejudices and Philosophical Smal...

Chapter 2: Pride, Prejudices and Philosophical Smalltalk  
"Snape was WHAT?"   
  
"Apparently he, Professor McGregor and my mum were friends," Harry repeated to a wide-eyed Ron. They were sitting on their table in the DADA classroom as the dark-haired boy related the happenings of the previous night, trying to ignore the arrival of several chattering Slytherins who would be taught together with them. "He seemed to be really pissed off when she mentioned it, but he did not deny it either."  
  
"That's....ugh!" His friend shuddered visibly. "I mean who in his right mind would want to be friends with that ugly, greasy bastard? Really, the man's a snake! It would take a complete insane and mad person to..."   
  
"Ron," Harry interrupted him quietly, his green eyes flashing dangerously, "this is my mum we're talking about. Remember?"  
  
"Uh- yeah. Sorry. Forgot for a moment...", the redhead trailed off, taking great pains to inspect the wand in his hand. "But still!" he insisted after a moment. "Still...It's bloody weird! I mean Snape has always made painfully clear to the entire world that he HATES you!"  
  
Before Harry could return anything, the door opened and a breathless Hermione stormed in, a bunch of books in her arms. "Oh thank goodness, I already thought that I would be too late for the very first lesson!" she sighed relieved instead of greeting. Sitting down next to Ron, she flipped a strand of tangled brown hair behind her ears. "You know, I was in the...."  
  
"Library and forgot the time", the two boys continued in unison, exchanging a short look with each other.  
  
"Exactly." Not noticing the mockery, Hermione began to arrange the books decoratively in front of her. "What were you talking about anyway? According to your looks, it seemed to be rather seriously."  
  
As Harry quickly filled her in, her brown eyes began to widen more and more. "Your mother and Snape were FRIENDS?" she finally squealed unbelievingly.  
  
Ron grinned. "Yeah, that had been my reaction, too."  
  
"Err well...", glancing towards Harry, the girl obviously tried to find a proper explanation only to fail miserably for probably the first time in her entire life. "Perhaps he isn't as bad as we always thought", she eventually suggested in a doubting voice.  
  
The redhead snorted sarcastically. "Oh yes, when you put it like this, I cannot think how I failed to notice it", he retorted. "Honestly, Snape's a real pal. Practically perfect in every way. Except, you know, his entire personality."  
  
"Tell me about it." Harry twisted his face in disgust, remembering the thousand times the Potion Master had already tried his hardest to get him either expelled from school or humiliated in class. Then suddenly a little grin appeared on his lips. "But you should have seen the way this Professor McGregor treated him. I didn't think I would see the day someone teases him, slaps him, calls him "Sev" and still survives."   
  
"Sev?! She called him SEV?!" To the obvious confusion of the entire presents, Ron bursted out into hysterical laughter. "Good Merlin, what kind of person is that?!"  
  
"Come to think about it, they were in the same term, are of the same age", Hermione speculated dreamily before -to Harry's immense horror- beginning to giggle girlfully. "Perhaps they were in love with each other."  
  
"Finally declaring your stupid infatuation to Weasley, mudblood?"  
Remaining stoically quiet (in contrast to a furiously blushing Ron), Hermione didn't even bother to look up to the grey-eyed boy who had once more managed to appear right behind them without anyone's notice. "Malfoy, if you can't say anything nice, don't bother burdening the world with your incessant droning", she shot a soothing look into Ron´s direction. "I suppose this means that he'd never talk at all or what do you say?"  
  
A flicker ran through the cold grey eyes, like a sliver of lightning through a sea of storm clouds as the tall blond leaned closer to Hermione, eyeing her in a way at which the girl raised her head in anticipation. She knew Draco Malfoy well enough by now to tell that this expression always preceded an insult he was particularly proud of having come up with. And she wasn't mistaken. "I should have known that you would try to protect your little friend, Granger." Malfoy gave the girl a sneer that practically dripped with contempt. "He's probably the best prospect someone like you has in life."   
  
The girl blinked in surprise, while Ron stood up to face his chosen arch-nemesis. "What the hell do you want to say with this, Malfoy?" he hissed in a voice that made Harry fear for the worst.  
  
"Ron, he just wants to provoke you", he tried to calm down his friend's temper, but the Weasley only waved him away impatiently before turning back to Malfoy. "Well?"  
  
"Isn't this easy to see?" A sardonic little smile appeared on the other boy's pale lips as his eyes wandered back to Hermione, not bothering to hide their disgust. "She's nothing but a mudblood but then", the smile widened. "she would fit quite well into your family, I am sure. Judging from the hut you are living in, you and your people must be quite accustomed to dirt."  
  
Ice dripped down Harry's spine and melted into his blood as the double-insult of the words sunk in while he saw Hermione hitching her breath. Then the shock turned to burning anger bubbling forward, but before he could only think of a proper retort, Ron had already threw himself on Malfoy, his eyes more furious than Harry had ever seen them before.   
  
"You incredible, nasty..." The incoherent rage in the Weasley´s voice made even Malfoy blink.   
  
"Ron, NOT!" Hermione rushed after him, obviously trying to save the situation by keeping her friend in his seat, but it was already too late. Both boys had spoken their curses at the same time and although Harry didn't acoustically understand one of them, their results were damn near a new holocaust.  
  
Hermione, hit by Malfoy´s attack, fell back to the floor with a little scream, taking the books, she had neatly placed on her desk before, with her, while Ron had somehow managed to set free a storm that sent every object in the classroom, that was lighter than a feather, into the air.  
  
Seeing how both, Gryffindor and Slytherin students, had the hell of a time trying to avoid painful crashes with flying flowerpots and other dangerously active objects, Harry stood up frantically and rose his wand, not quiet knowing what he intended to do with it, when he suddenly heard a familiar voice behind him: "FINITE INCANTATEM!"  
  
Abruptly fell silent; the only sound heard was the simultaneous turn of heads and gasps at the tall blonde in the door entrance, who was staring at the destruction of the classroom with dangerously shining dark blue eyes. In any other moment some student would have whistled admiringly or clapped his hands, but confronted with the sapphire coloured death of the new teacher's gaze, everybody just hold their breaths, waiting for what would come now.  
  
While Malfoy scrambled to his seat, Ron eventually regained consciousness, and helped the bruised Hermione to sit down on her chair again, murmuring some vague apology into her direction.   
  
"What in Merlin's name is going on here?" Professor McGregor finally demanded to know in an alarming quiet voice. Her eyes flashed through the room and finally landed on Harry. But instead of addressing him, she turned towards Dean Thomas behind him. "You over there! Would you kindly fill me in?"  
  
Blushing at the unexpected attention, Dean nodded, obviously deciding to sum up the situation as shortly as possibly. "Malfoy has called Hermione a mudblood which was why Ron attacked him", he explained, pointing towards the actors of the earlier show. "In the process they somehow managed to demolate the classroom."   
  
Following his gaze, the new teacher let her sapphire eyes wander from a heavy breathing Ron to a pale but controlled Draco with an unreadable expression on her face. "Malfoy, huh?", she finally asked, her tone still too neutral to be taken at face value. "And judging from your looks you are a Weasley, I suppose? Well, I think that proves the old saying of traditions that never die."  
  
Without ever taking her eyes from them, she approached the two boys with the flawless movements Harry still remembered from the previous evening. "I recall your fathers having little wars like this going on all the time when they were in school", she continued in her casual tone, the corner of her mouth shortly quirking at the memory. "The two of them were one year under me but nevertheless they somehow managed to entertain the whole school with their childish rivalries. But this", her tone sharpened, "this does not mean that I will tolerate this sort of behaviour in my classroom. Do you two understand me?!"   
  
"Yes, Professor", both boys muttered, throwing hateful glances at each other.   
  
Still staring at them, she finally sighed deeply. "So what shall I do with you now?" she asked, shaking her head in slight annoyance. "I can hardly blame any of you to be responsible for this idiotic inter-house discrimination that has been running rampant at this school ever since it opened, can I?"   
  
Pressing her lips together she seemed to think her options all over, only to sigh again in the end, this time sounding somehow defeated. "Well, if you agree to clear out this mess, I won't take any points from you, I guess. Nevertheless I'd like to remind you that many people judge Hogwarts houses from the behaviour of its inhabitants." Her eyes finally rested on Malfoy, their expression profoundly cold by now. "This goes especially to you, Mr Malfoy, so kindly try to keep back the next time you feel like insulting a Muggle-born classmate."  
  
The boy looked up, his grey eyes widening in sheer disbelief. "You think that insulting a mudblood brings shame on Slytherin?" he repeated the sense of her words incredulously.  
  
The sweet line of the teacher's mouth grew even harder. "Use your brain, Mr Malfoy", she advised him sharply. "It is no secret that Slytherin has gotten itself the rather dubious reputation of having brought forth more dark wizards than any other. So don't you think that your generation should try to prove that the House does still hold his old honour?"   
  
While most of the students began to hold their breath at Professor McGregor's true but usually not loudly spoken words, Malfoy blushed, obviously not that sure about himself anymore. "My father...", he began rather unsure.  
  
"Your father", the blonde interrupted him coldly. "I don't doubt that Lucius would have thought just like you, but then he always possessed something you failed to show us today. It's called tact."  
  
Some Gryffindors began to giggle but instantly shut up as the professor shot a short glance in their direction. "The Serpent's House is not synonymous with malice or unfair behaviour!" she continued in a surprisingly ragged tone. "Slytherins start out the same as everybody else who passes through this school. They are not chosen for malice, but for their ambition and their capability of greatness. Never forget this, Mr Malfoy! It is not the house that makes the wizard or the witch, it's the choice one makes!"  
  
Her attention suddenly wandered back to Ron. "By the way, Mr Weasley!"  
  
Ron looked up. "Yes, Professor?"  
  
The blonde's expression was unreadable. "Try to behave yourself the next time someone tries to provoke you. Mr Malfoy certainly didn't act properly but this doesn't mean that you have to overreact like a little child and to demolate my classroom." She snorted ironically. "I remember that Gryffindors use to call behaviour like this defending their honour. _I_ call it stupid."   
  
Half the Slytherins slid off their chairs in surprise. Others were beginning to grin wickedly, obviously agreeing with all their heart - in contrast to Ron who only stared wide-eyed at the new teacher. "You mean I should simply let him insult one of my best friends?" he asked incredulously.  
  
"No", Professor McGregor corrected him softly. "I mean that you shouldn't give him the satisfaction of acting exactly like he supposed you to do. I admire courage in any form but behaviour like this can lead to certain death."  
  
Harry froze at this remark but his friend obviously had not gotten McGregor's point. "So you suppose that we should just let the bloody Snakes go around and insult all Muggle-born without doing..."  
  
"I'd like you to remember the fact that I was in Slytherin myself, Mr Weasley", she interrupted him again, the bright flash in her eyes betraying her indifferent voice. "And let me take the liberty to say that I was always proud of my House."  
  
Beginning to walk the classroom up and down in her feline way, she let her eyes wander among them all, a distant expression in them as if she did not see them but other students of another time. Then she shook her head, letting her pretty golden hair fly through the air in an elegant swift arc. "Don't think that I want to disgrace your house, Mr Weasley, I am far from it. My elder sister and my very best friends had both been Gryffindors and they had been wiped out as a symbolic assertion of the power and truth of the very Slytherin philosophy you are criticising right now", her jaw clenched momentarily as her eyes locked with Harry's for the shortest of seconds, leaving back a painfully aching in the boy's chest. "But then the Serpent's House is not the only one at fault for the current state", she finally continued firmly. "As far as I remember from my time, Ravenclaws used to persist in thinking of Hufflepuffs as slow and doddering fools with a collective house intellect in the single digits, while they themselves were seen as swotty bookworms without any talent of playing Quidditch properly by the other houses. Nevertheless it was always Slytherin who had to bear the blame for every little discrimination going on at this school."  
  
While most of the Gryffindors looked baffled, the fraction of the Slytherins began to murmur in obvious agreement, eying their new teacher with the respect they ordinary only seemed to have occupied for their Head of House.  
  
Professor McGregor eyes wandered to Snape's students, their expression milder by now. "Of course you can correct me if I'm wrong."  
  
"You're not." Everybody turned round to face Blaise Zabini, a pale dark-haired Slytherin girl, all dark waves and seastorm eyes covered under the longest and thickest lashes one could imagine. Although being known as a good student, she never spoke much, always preferred to observe everything calmly, but obviously something about the new teacher's words had managed to excite her. "However that does not mean that any of these Gryffindors will understand you." She continued, sending a short glance into their direction. "It's so much easier when everything is black and white, so why should they bother to ask themselves if we're all in for the Dark Arts or if some of us just like our privacy?"  
  
"You say it", Pansy Parkinson agreed, surprising the class with her vehemence perhaps even more than Blaise did with speaking at all. Snorting contemptuously, she glared at the Gryffindors, to nobody's surprise most venomously at Harry. "But ever since this scar-headed celebrity arrived here, even the Headmaster has forgotten that there are still other houses. 'Well done, Slytherin, well done--but wait! Here, Gryffindor, have a hundred and sixty points, you can win this year because you have The Boy who Lived!'"   
  
"That's not fair!" A purple red Harry bursted out furiously.  
  
A cold smile graced Pansy's lips. "There you are damn right."  
  
Before a new tumult could break out in class, Professor McGregor suddenly began to laugh quietly, making everybody in the room turning the attention back at her. "I think you got the message", she finally explained to her stunned students with an irresistible sweet smile that lightened up her eyes as much as her lips, apparently amused about a private joke she alone could understand. "You all are more or less secretly holding a grunge against each other, the Slytherins perhaps even more than the others, because they consider themselves hated by 3/4 of the school."  
  
"And they are damn right to do so", Ron muttered but instantly shut up as a sapphire blue flash was sent into his direction.  
  
"And so", the professor continued as she turned back towards them, "it had been for centuries. Some students come here damaged. Taught to hate. They are shunned, then they become bitter, and pass that bitterness to their own offspring, and the hatred gets worse and worse as the generations pass. But I don't want anybody of you to forget that they're all still children, and that their choices are their own."  
  
With this she stopped, once again glancing to Harry as if she'd like to tell him something but thought better of it in the last instant. Looking at the still silent students in front of her, she decided to ease the situation with another bell-like laughter. "And this was my first lection. You are dismissed now." Twinkling teasingly at them, she flipped back a lock of golden hair. "But don't think that we will go on like that and doing nothing but philosophical small talk in this class. Next lesson you will have to bring your books with you, understand?"  
  
The tense silence broke as the first of the students began to gather their belongings and vanished chatting out of the door. Harry followed them in silence together with Ron and Hermione, not realizing that two sapphire blue eyes still rested on him as he left the classroom, their expression distant, as if though they were seeing something in him that no one else was supposed to know about.   
********************************************************************************  
Flashback:  
  
"I don't understand it! I simply don't understand it!" The pretty blonde exclaimed, her brilliant blue eyes flashing angrily while she walked the room up and down. "Why the freaking hell have I to be tutored by the greasiest bastard of the entire school? And if that would not be enough, I simply don't get why I'll be taught together with this arrogant Gryffindor bitch of all things!"  
  
"I certainly did not beg to waste my precious time with two morons who are too stupid to brew even a simple shrinking solution!" the black-haired boy her outburst was partly addressed to, snapped back, his dark eyes glaring in a way that could make first years flee. "If you want to know the reason for this nonsense, why don't you simply go and ask Dumbledore?"  
  
The blonde snorted in utter disgust. "As if this old muggle loving fool would bother to tell me!" she returned shrewdly. "Nevertheless I'd really, _really_ like to know!"   
  
"Well, isn't this obvious?"   
  
Both, the blond and the black-haired, turned in unison towards the third person in the room, who had by now slunken herself into the leather chair against the far wall, glowing like a little candle with her flaming hair, arms folded, obviously quite tired of both their outbursts.   
  
"If this is so why wouldn't you let us participate in your superior knowledge, Evans?" the boy asked icily. "Somehow I fail to follow your surely brilliant train of thoughts."  
  
Eying him coolly with her irritating sparkling green eyes, Lily Evans flipped back a strand of blood-red hair, the relaxed lines of her shoulders proclaiming that she was completely unimpressed by his sarcasm. "Well, it's quite logical, Severus", she returned in her flat teenage voice, bored by the stupidity of the others and making no confession to the marvellous. "You, this hysterical blonde and me, we are all three known to be loners or, to be more accurate, "antisocial pricks" - and we all know how highly our dear Headmaster praises the virtues of friendship and teamwork, don't we?"   
  
While Severus´ forehead began to frown in sudden understanding, the blonde only snorted pejoratively. "Speak for yourself and Snape, Evans, but not for me!" she shot in, shaking her pretty head in unhidden contempt. "_I_ have no problem in finding friends."  
  
"You mean brainless admirers, Morrigan", the other girl corrected her without any malice, but with the violent disregard for foreign feelings she was feared for in school. "Morons who fail to see that there is more about you than beautiful looks and a sweet smile. Whom of them would you actually call a friend?"  
  
Morrigan opened her mouth in denial, then shut it again, obviously in spite of herself agreeing with the redhead and therefore not quite knowing how to react. "Whatever", she finally returned uncertainly, flipping a lock of tangled blond hair out of her face. "So you really guess that this silly tutoring is a futile attempt of Dumbeldore´s to create some sort of attachment between his three black sheep?"   
  
Severus sneered contemptuously. "Come to think about it, this is so ridiculous that it might really be our precious Headmaster's idea."  
  
"I knew there was a reason I never listened to the old fool before", the blonde stated dryly while letting herself fall in the chair next to Lily's. "Say what you want but this does nothing but prove my hypothesis of him missing a couple of screws up there."   
  
The corner of Severus´ lips quirked. "For once I agree."  
  
Lily's green eyes were observing their little exchange with their usual unreadable expression. "Not that I don't marvel at this historical first but since we cleared the reason for this stupid tutoring, I'd rather suggest us to begin with it", she remarked casually. "I really don't fancy the thought of failing potions again."  
  
Severus rose an eyebrow, but before he could return whatever remark laid on his tongue, Morrigan's soft laughter suddenly shattered on the cold stones of the Dungeon. "Ambition. That much I can understand about you, Evans." She nodded, her blue eyes regarding the other girl thoughtfully. "Even if it astonishes me to find it burning so brightly in a Gryffindor."  
  
The usual uninterest in the green eyes faded slightly for the fraction of a second and made place to a sort of bitterness no one of the two had ever expected to see in them. "You are expressing what most of my dear housemates think", the redhaired girl returned in a frightening blank voice. "´Lily Evans is such a heartless bitch that she would have better been sorted into Slytherin. The Sorting Head probably just did not cause she's nothing but a dirty mudblood´!"  
  
The blonde blinked in surprise before regaining her composure, while Severus snorted loudly. "I have considered you brighter than to hear to what those idiots say, Evans", he told the other one rather tartly. "Muggle-born or not, you have more talent in your little finger than most of them have in their wand.- Don't take it as a compliment, just as an observation", he added quickly, while trying to avoid the astonished expression of her green eyes.  
  
"However he means it, Snape is quite right!" Morrigan agreed. Leaning back in her chair, she absently began to play with the wand in her hands. "You are really good, you know, and therefore you will always have to face envy...And it's not like you're the only one who is prejudiced against because of her sorting", she added after a short while, her tone too casual to be taken at false value. "Take me as an example. I don't think you to be aware of the fact that my whole bloody family has been in Gryffindor?"  
  
The green eyes stared intently at her. "So?"  
  
"So?" Morrigan sneered, but instead of non-caring, it sounded rather sad this time. "Bloody hell, Lily, you know exactly how the other houses judge Slytherin. Ever since I've been sorted, my oh-so-perfect elder sister, former Head girl by the way, and my dear parents consider me some sort of murderous dark witch. It's like they always long to ask me how many muggles I have killed in the last term when I come home for the holidays."   
  
Lily began to laugh, the usual uninterested expression betrayed by a sparkle of green fire in her eyes. "Just like my sister. Petunia never misses the opportunity to tell me that I'm nothing but some bloody freak."  
  
"Well, at least your families register that you exist", Severus shot in darkly, his black eyes dimmed for a moment before he shook his head in rough denial, obviously angry about ever having opened his mouth.   
  
The two girls exchanged quick glanced. "Not quite the perfect pure-blooded Slytherin family, Sev?" Morrigan finally purred, her tone somewhere between mockery and real interest. "Well you know the old saying: if you ever need a sheltering shoulder..."  
  
"I'd rather die than to turn to you," Severus retorted, but the little smile appearing on his thin lips wasn't quite the usual twisted sneer his classmates hated him for. Then he shot a dark glance into her direction. "And DON´T call me SEV!"  
  
Again, the two girls exchanged a quick look, this time underlined with a wicked little grin. "Whatever you say, Snapie", Morrigan returned sweetly.  
  
"Although "Sev" seems to fit you quite well", Lily added, her expression matching the blonde one's effortlessly. "But if you prefer it the other way..."  
  
The blackhaired only rolled his eyes. "Honestly, someday I will strangulate Dumbledore for this."   
  
*******************************************************************************************  
PS: First of all I thank my three reviewers!!! You guys are great!  
PPS: I am sorry for the delay, but the bitter truth is that my muse is an unfaithful little bitch who happens to disappear whenever I have enough time to write and only reappears when I´m busy with my studies. Nevertheless I hope you will still continue to read and to review this fic - I also hope to be faster with the following parts =^_~=! 


	3. The long dark teatime of the Soul I

Chapter 3: The long dark teatime of the soul I  
  
Harry mounted up and soared high into the air above the Quidditch field, displaying all of his usual skill but nothing of his usual enthusiasm. Although the time at the team practice when he could fly on his broom and see all over Hogwarts and its surroundings, he normally felt best, today his concentration was occupied with other things. Or more precisely with trying to forget his dream from last night.  
  
Which proved itself quite a difficult task for he only had to close his eyes, just for a second, just for a the shortest of times and he was there again:  
  
...Darkness. Endless black night and in its midst grave and silent, nearly peaceful the graveyard where the beautiful pale boy lays down a single blood-red rose on the lonely gravestone standing apart from the other. He whispers no prayer, sings no requiem, sheds no tear, just lays down the rose with an unreadable expression on his handsome face.  
  
As he noticed the other's arrival he looks up and Harry stares into dark green eyes, feeling no fear but only a weird, tired kind of understanding and sympathy...  
  
Forcing himself back into the reality of the breathtaking beautiful autumn day, the boy felt his face growing hot, knowing exactly that it wasn't from the effort of flying. The last thing he needed or wanted now were dreams like this. Dreams that suggested just too clearly that he was heading deeper and deeper into darkness with every step he made, following ties that bind him against his will, ties that ran deeper than blood...  
  
"Stop daydreaming Harry, this isn't History of Magic! And George, you're supposed to be helping your team to get the Quaffle, not knocking them off their brooms!"  
  
Luckily for him, the rest of the team had joined him in the air just now and the captain's demanding voice soon drove all thought from Harry's mind as he tried to spot the Snitch that had already been released into the air.  
  
Bending low over his broom, the wind whistled past him as he rushed through the air, narrowing her eyes against the rushing breathe. Suddenly he caught sight of a glimmer of gold. Just a fraction of a second more and- there!  
  
The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur. By the end of practice he was tired, sore, bruised and generally knocked about. If he had ever thought that training would be easier with Oliver graduated, this hope had surely proven itself futile.  
  
"How did I ever get so out of shape?" he moaned as he walked back to the castle with Fred, whose twin had still not fully recovered from a painful collision with Alicia and had therefore decided to remain on the field to talk to Angelina about her way too brutal training or - what stroke Harry as more realistic - to flirt his hardest with the pretty captain. "Gah, this is going to hurt tomorrow."  
  
"Just be thankful it's Saturday and we won't have to go to classes." Fred winced and reached up to rub at the back of his neck. "Gosh, and I thought _Oliver_ was a fanatic. But sweet Angie tops him easily."  
  
Harry snorted. "Tell me about it. I don't even know if I can make it back to the Tower at this rate. I might just crash in the Great Hall."  
  
Both boys laughed heartfully before they fell silent again. "Harry?" The Weasley twin suddenly asked. "May I ask you a question?"  
  
Harry looked up astonished. "Of course."  
  
"Ah well", Fred bit his lip a bit uncomfortably. "I know that it is really none of my business, but you seemed to be a bit distracted when the training begin. As if something was bothering you a great deal."  
  
Harry felt himself paling. Had he been this transparent? Had everybody seen the direction his thoughts had went to?  
  
Misunderstanding his friend's reaction, Fred grinned quickly. "Hey, don't look at me like I want to marry you or something", he joked. "You weren't obvious, really, I just noticed. Don't you want to talk about it?"  
  
Confronted with the bright blue eyes, Harry simply could not bring himself to answer the question. Not that he believed Fred to be capable to understand it anyway. It wasn't the boy's fault, he knew that, it was nobody's fault but there was no way in hell any of his friends would ever understand the hidden part of him that would always ache for the soothing peacefulness of darkness, the part that knew death and pain very well for living close to them all the time, and that had at some point of his life gone numb to them. "It's nothing, really", he finally returned, noticing himself how unconvincing his voice sounded.  
  
And indeed Fred remained suspicious. "It's not this stupid story about the big Slytherin Git being friends with your mother, is it? You know, Ron told me and George about it."  
  
As Harry blinked in surprise, the Weasley twin obviously misunderstood this as a "yes". "Honestly, Harry, you shouldn't worry about it. If you ask me, trying to understand Snape is like fishing in the lake around school." He shrugged his shoulders, his eyes narrowing as he considered another solution for his friend's problem. "Have you thought about interrogating Hagrid on the matter? Like why he never told you about it?"  
  
"I already did", the boy confessed.  
  
"And what did he say?"  
  
Harry's mouth quirked sarcastically. "´Yeh never asked.´"  
  
Fred began to laugh heartily. "Not the brightest god in heaven, is he?"  
  
"He told me...", the dark-haired boy broke up, feeling himself blushing at the memory. "Well, he said that there were rumours about...my mum and Snape...you know people gossiped that... they were in love or something."  
  
Fred whistled quietly. "And furthermore?"  
  
Still deeply red, Harry's eyes focussed on the cloudless blue sky. So perfect. Almost too much to take. "Obviously, they had a fight when they were in their sixth year", he eventually continued with his weird story. "Hagrid said that from one day to the other, without anyone knowing the reason why, Snape and Professor McGregor wouldn't speak a word to my mother anymore. As they withdraw, she began to befriend my father and this is the end of the story."  
  
The redhead looked very thoughtful. "And Hagrid had absolutely no clue what their quarrel was about?"  
  
"Not really. He just said...", Harry paused, trying to give back the gamekeeper's words appropriately. "He said that people considered Lucius Malfoy to be involved somehow. Snape and McGregor must have been hanging around with him a lot after they broke with my mum."  
  
Fred's usually merry eyes flashed dangerously at the mention of Draco´s father. "If this slimy Deatheater-bastard was involved, there was something foul about it, no question", he predicted darkly. Then he suddenly began to grin, obviously coming up with one of his wicked ideas. "Have you ever considered to ask McGregor about this? Her tests are really cunning, but apart from that she is a real angel. I am sure she would agree to tell you something about your mum."  
  
"She already offered to", Harry admitted.  
  
The blue eyes were looking at him incredulously. "So why don't you simply go and ask her?"  
  
"Well because...", the younger boy hesitated, not sure how to explain this. As he thought about it, there was no real reason anyway. "I think you are right", he finally said wistfully. Then for the first time this day his expression lightened up. "Thanks, Fred."  
  
"Hey, no problem. Wherefore do you have such a smart, brilliant and good- looking guy as a friend?" The redhead grinned. "I take it that think of me when you visit Honeydukes the next time?"  
  
Harry grinned back. "Sure."  
  
**************************************************************************** ****  
  
Walking down the darkening corridors, the boy's feet barely made a sound as he padded over the stone floor.  
  
He did not know himself why he hesitated so much to go to Professor McGregor, but ever since she had made her generous offer, he had felt rather reluctant to accept it. Not that he did not want to hear something about his mother, the contrary was the case, but then a rather bitter part of him never failed to remind him that the lack of memory he had of his parents could also be seen as a blessing. He had been too young to remember anything about them, too young to understand the finality of death and although he felt their loss keenly, he had to admit to himself that it was barely more than a dull ache in his heart that was not even there when he did not think about it. He could not grieve their deaths so much, because he had nothing of them to miss. Or more precisely, he added sarcastically, he had had nothing of them to miss until the Dementors in this third year had made blurry visions and therefore the vague pain sharper and clearer.  
  
Cursing himself for his egoism, he angrily bit himself on the lips and stopped before the DADA teacher's private rooms, taking a deep breath.  
  
It was not like Professor McGregor would mind his visit, he told himself. In fact, the carefree blonde was by far the most understanding teacher he had met so far. Although expecting a great deal of her students, she never got angry or impatient if anyone did not understand something at once, and after she had actually managed to teach Neville how to use a rather complicated spell effectively, everybody considered her a walking miracle anyway. Hermione of course never failed to remark that some of the attacks and counter curses the blonde taught them were way too powerful for them and sometimes damn near to be officially forbidden, but since Professor McGregor's mischievous fun loving nature, her interesting lessons and her unprejudiced attitude towards all Houses had made her the favourite teacher of the entire school in no time at all, nobody listened to those complaints.  
  
It was nearly a joke how the blonde attracted everybody to her without the tiniest bit of effort, the boy thought to himself. Even Snape showed some human trades when being in her company - and that he was surprisingly often. If anyone had ever told Harry that the Potion Master would actually befriend the new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, he would have told this person to go and see a therapist but then it was quite obvious to everybody that the unbelievable had actually happened.  
  
Harry had to grin. He knew more than a couple of boys at school who would kill to be in Snape's place.  
  
Already less nervous he finally knocked on the door before him.  
  
"Come in", he heard a melodic voice.  
  
Following the invitation, Harry stepped into the blonde's private space - and gasped. He had known the room from his visits at Lupin´s, but he barely recognized it now. Instead of the old worn carpet, a blue Persian with pink and golden roses now laid on the floor, beautifully fitting to the deep dusty golden colour of the wallpaper and the big gorgeous blooms of fresh flowers arranged in porcelain vases here and there. Together with the pretty little porcelain dolls on the majestic bookshelves, the room suddenly seemed very beautiful and elegant, yet in the same time comfortable to behold.  
  
"Do you like it?"  
  
Harry jumped at the sound of his name and blurred around to the source of the voice whom he had nearly forgotten in his admiration. Professor McGregor was sitting on an elegant sofa, not covered with the worn velvet he remembered but with the same pink damask which hung from the windows, gorgeous and warm in the flickering light of the unfamiliar chandelier hanging from the oval cluster of plaster leaves on the ceiling.  
  
Obviously she had already been ready for bedtime since she only wore a simple white cotton gown that made her look like an angel from some old Renaissance masterpiece or like some pretty little girl that was waiting for her goodnight kiss. The dim light let her hair shine like a soft cloud of pure gold around her creamy skin and her big blue eyes shimmered brilliantly as she laid the book, she had been reading in aside to greet Harry with her heartbreaking sweet smile. "I was already wondering when you were going to show up."  
  
Harry nodded, still a bit taken aback. "I nearly didn't recognize the room", he made a humble attempt at small talk.  
  
Throwing her shimmering golden locks back, the DADA teacher laughed agreeable. "Well, Hogwarts has been a place of safety for generations of wizards and witches and since I honestly hope not to leave its walls so soon again, I've decided to make myself a bit at home", she explained cheerfully. "To be honest, the last years have been a bit...unrested."  
  
The boy tried to nod intelligently. "You were living in Ireland, right?" he recollected the information Dumbledore had given them on the Start-of-Term Feast. "What were you doing there?"  
  
The blonde shrugged. "Nothing interesting, really. I just needed some time away from England, so I took a job at the Irish Ministry of Magic. But I don't suppose that you came here tonight to hear about your old teacher's boring life?" As she twinkled teasingly at him, she didn't appear any older than him. "You want me to tell you something about Lily, right?"  
  
Blushing, Harry nodded. "But if you don't have time at the moment..."  
  
"Oh nonsense", she interrupted him with a wink of her hand, while standing up in one fluid movement. "Listen, what do you think about a cup of tea? I make us some and then we just chat a bit, okay?"  
  
Somehow relieved that she made things so simple for him, he nodded agreeing. "Sounds good."  
  
"All right then." With her usual grace she turned around to a door which led to a little kitchen as Harry knew. "Take a seat and make yourself at home while I am preparing everything", she offered him before sweeping out of the room. "It won't take too long."  
  
With her vanished, Harry took place on the sofa hesitantly, his eyes curiously glancing towards the book, the blonde had been reading in.  
  
"The Flowers of Evil" by Charles Baudelaire, he read with a frown. Baudelaire...wasn't that some old muggle poet?  
  
But before he could try to recollect his memory further, Professor McGregor reappeared, carefully balancing a try with small pretty cups of steaming liquid. "I hope you like jasmine tea. It's the only one I have at the moment", she said merrily.  
  
"Ah...thanks", Harry quickly stood up to help her with the tray. After they had set it down, he pointed at the book. "Is he any good? Baudelaire I mean?"  
  
"Huh?" Following his eyes, she threw a casual glance to the book. "Oh that. Severus borrowed it to me. He's absolutely addicted to depressing stuff like that. So was your mum, by the way." A little smile appeared on her sweet lips. "The library was sort of her second home, I daresay."  
  
The boy's throat suddenly felt dry. "She liked poetry?" he repeated.  
  
"I don't think `like` does express it accurately", the blonde smirked, unmistakably amused by the memory. "To say she revelled in it would get straighter to the point."  
  
Harry stared into his teacup. "I did not know that", he muttered. As he noticed her surprised look, he blushed. "I know it sounds foolish but sometimes I feel like...you know, there are dozens of people out there who knew her better than I did. I have no idea what she liked or what she disliked and I...it's just not fair."  
  
"It doesn't sound foolish at all", she returned softly. "Life is rarely fair and it has always proven itself rather cruel to you in particular. I would understand it perfectly if you felt sometimes bitter about your fate, Harry."  
  
As he looked up astonished, she moved forwards to lay her slender white hand tenderly on his, her expression totally sincere. "I know that many people just see "The Boy who lived" when they look at you. But I can imagine how much pressure this title puts on you and I wager that you would give it away freely, if you just could have your parents back again." Her voice was gentle although her eyes did not really seem to focus on him but on some distant point only she could see. Then she suddenly shook her head abruptly and removed her hand. "You say that you don't know anything about Lily. How comes it that Lupin hasn't told you anything about her when he taught here?"  
  
It took one moment for Harry to follow her sudden change of subject. "He told me a great deal about my dad", he finally answered, still shaken by her earlier words. How came that a complete stranger could read him so well, could tell his most secret thoughts when even his closest friends couldn't? "But then he said that he did not know my mum well enough to judge her."  
  
To his surprise, the blonde snorted in a tone that reminded him greatly of Snape. "For once I agree with him."  
  
The boy looked puzzled. "You don't think very highly of him, do you?" he asked carefully.  
  
Professor McGregor wrinkled her nose girlfully. "That's a nice way of understating things." Taking a nip from her tea, she hesitated for one moment, obviously not sure how to explain this to him. "Too be quite honest, I wasn't great friends with your father or the rest of his clique either. For me they were just some stupid Gryffindor gits and they didn't think of me any better."  
  
A bit taken aback at this, Harry first had to clear his throat before demanding his next question. "And why was this so?"  
  
She only shrugged her shoulders, giving him a pointed look he could not quite read. "Can you explain your unqualified dislike of Mr Malfoy?" she countered. "Was there even one moment when you might have become his friend?"  
  
"I guess I know what you mean", the boy returned after a while of silence, feeling slightly uncomfortable with the comparison. Then another question popped up in his green eyes. "And my mum? How was her relationship to my father when she still befriended you and Professor Snape?"  
  
"Lily's?" Professor McGregor's eyes softened as much as her voice at the name of her dead friend. "Who can know for sure what she thought or not? You must know, Harry, your mother was everything but easy to understand. Although we were friends from our third to our sixth year here at Hogwarts, there was always some part of her that I could not reach, that was beyond my tenderness or my concern."  
  
She leaned back on the sofa, obviously searching for the right words to explain it to him. "She was probably the prettiest witch of the entire Gryffindor generation far and wide, and surely the most intelligent and the most reckless, and yet there was something vulnerable about her, something that most people did not notice when dealing with her." A little smile graced the Professor's crimson lips. "Surely she was not the typical Gryffindor at first sight, but if you knew her a bit better, you began to understand the Sorting Head's decision perfectly."  
  
"How...", Harry had to breathe in deeply, painfully conscious of the old familiar constriction around his heart. "How do you mean that?"  
  
"She feared nothing", the blonde answered with surprising tenderness. "No power on this earth could ever scare her or make her feel uncomfortable with herself. Lily Evans was on every count a winner." Her blue eyes searched Harry's green ones. "She always tried so hard to understand everything and except from the stupid potions, there was nothing in any realm which she could not grasp. Sometimes there was something violently disregarding about the way she demanded to know the unadorned truth about the things that interested her and people considered her cold for it but I swear she was never heartless or cruel on purpose. In fact, I never met a person more loyal than Lily. She had the bravery of a lioness when it came to defending her loved ones and she would have willingly sacrificed her life for her friends. - But then you are the living proof of my words."  
  
Harry felt a crush so painful that it could scream his lungs out. Then he shook his head in rough denial. "If you were so close, why did you finally break up?" he finally demanded to know in a voice he barely recognized as his own.  
  
For one moment something he had never before seen in her azure eyes flickered brightly in their depths and hid itself again. "This is a long story, Harry", she eventually returned after what seemed an eternity. "A story about betrayal and power, but above all about greatness."  
  
Staring at the ceiling, a distant expression appeared on the blonde's features as if she was listening to some distant, ominous music she alone could hear. "Greatness", she repeated softly. "Perhaps you are too young to know this, but greatness never comes without price - and since your mother, in contrast to Severus and me, was not willing to pay it, this was how it all ended."  
  
The ghost of a memory clouded her eyes for a short instant. "She would not adjust and suddenly nothing was as it had been before. Lily began to befriend your father while Sev and I turned to Lucius Malfoy. And these, Harry, were worlds that could not be united."  
  
"I suppose", Harry muttered, somewhere between sarcasm and thoughtfulness, before he looked up again, not knowing how challenging his green eyes suddenly flashed. "Why Malfoy?"  
  
Professor McGregor gave him a very strange look. "It seemed...fitting", she finally returned, her expression unreadable. "We made a good team, Lucius with his charisma and his charm the born leader, Severus the schemer and planner and me the person, who could easily bedazzle everybody she ever laid her eyes on, to clear the way out for them. Call it Slytherin ambition if you like."  
  
"Did my mum understand it?"  
  
The bitterness of her smile shocked him. "Just too well, I fear. And I think in your heart of hearts you do as well."  
  
Her eyes now laid with brutal intensity on him as though they could see something in him nobody else was supposed to know about. "People may have told you that you come after your father, but that's not true. You're totally like Lily", she finally said, the tone of her voice not leaving space for any argument. "You were both Gryffindors but only by a hair. You nearly ended as serpents."  
  
Harry felt himself flaming. How could she know? How could she know that the Sorting Head had wanted to place him into Slytherin? And what was this comparison with his mother about?  
  
"Don't look so shocked, boy, that wasn't an insult." Without loosing their serious expression, her eyes softened again. "We are not evil as a rule, Harry, I thought you would have learned this much already. True, we have 'Great ambition' and we are 'cunning', but nevertheless some of us can be trusted."  
  
Eying him thoughtfully, she flipped back a strand of golden locks back absent-minded. "Take Severus as an example. I know that you and your friends do not like him very much, and from you're perspective that's not really surprising, I guess, but do you actually think that he, however curt, nasty and downright mean he can be, would actually harm any of his students? Do you really think that he would ever, ever physically harm a child under his care?" She shook her head unwillingly as if she was about to enter realms of her memory she was not prepared to handle. When she continued her voice was strangely hoarse. "That man would die to protect you, Harry. I know he would."  
  
Harry, not able to face the expression of those blue eyes any longer, had to look away. "You're probably right", he murmured. "But why is he always so bitter? Why does he hate me so much if he and my mum were friends?"  
  
The blonde's eyes clouded until they became some blurry shade of midnight blue. "If you ask me the problem was that the two had been too close for their own good", she finally answered absent-minded. "They had been soulmates from the very beginning on; sometimes they only had to look at each other and they knew exactly what the other one was thinking. Severus was the only one to understand Lily and she was the only one to understand him. He had trusted her with all his heart and I suppose that seeing her and his arch-enemy together, had...stirred something in him. He had always been so proud."  
  
The last words were spoken with a strange melancholy the boy did not understand, but that he denied himself to think about just now. Hesitating shortly before his next question, he blurted it out nevertheless. "When he was so damn proud, how could he then go to Voldemort?"  
  
The blue eyes opened in a flash, staring at him with something like fire in their depths. For one moment the boy felt a prickle of fear up his spine, but as suddenly as the change had come over the blonde, it disappeared again. "For the same reason so many people in Slytherin did, I suppose - because he was driven to him", she finally answered his question in a frightening blank voice, her words more addressed to herself than to Harry. "We come to this school as innocent children and everyday for eight years of our lives we are told that we are snakes, attached to darkness, evil. Isn't it ironic how surprised everyone acted when so many of us went into the Dark Arts, when most of us never had a choice or anywhere else to go?"  
  
"Aren't there always other options?"  
  
"Are there?" she returned thoughtfully. "Do you know how many employers demand to know what house you were in at school? If you don't have parents, who can afford to buy you a high position in society, this means that every Hufflepuff is more likely to get the job than a Slytherin. Well, why be stigmatised, when you can get power, and everything else you ever dreamed of, from Voldemort? Sooner or later, we all had to make that choice."  
  
One moment he marvelled at the fact that she spoke the name aloud. Then another, far more shocking aspect about her words made his heart stop beating for a moment. "You all hade to make this choice?" he repeated, his breath only coming in slow intervals. "This means...you too?"  
  
Her smile sent a shiver down his spine. "You of all people should know that there are different sorts of choosing and ways apart from the Dark Mark the Voldemort can get at you."  
  
Pressing her lips together in a firm line as if trying force back the ghost of some ugly memory by sheer willpower, the usual bright light in her eyes faded away abruptly, only leaving a frightened, desolate and empty-eyed child-woman behind. Harry suddenly remembered her words from the first DADA lesson *My elder sister and my very best friends had both been Gryffindors and they had been wiped out as a symbolic assertion of the power and truth of Slytherin philosophy...*  
  
"I'm sorry, Professor", he murmured, feeling guilty of having suspected her so easily. "I didn't mean to bring back bad memories."  
  
To his surprise a little absent-minded smile formed itself on her delicate lips. "Such a good little Gryffindor heart." Her eyes cleared in amazing speed as she was suddenly reaching out her hand for him. Before he could even register her intention, her finger softly hooked aside some of his hair to expose the scar hidden on his forehead. Tracing its the brief length with her thumb, she made him shiver inwardly and outwardly.  
  
...and for one moment he stands on the graveyard again, a lonely person against the vast horizon. I cannot remember them, the pale boy says. No, he replies, laying down another blood coloured flower on the cold stone. Neither can I...  
  
"But why am I telling someone about marks who has felt the hand of Hate itself?"  
  
Her words made him jump back into reality. "Professor?"  
  
The usually so brilliant blue eyes were clouded by something dark he could not name. "That is Hate's kiss, Harry", she told him very seriously. "Be thankful to every God you believe in that you don't remember how you've gotten it."  
  
"But I do." The words had left his mouth before he had had the slightest chance of holding them back. Staring at the beautiful fairylike woman in front of him, there was nothing that he could do but continuing. "When the Dementors approached me, I could hear it", he whispered, lost in the endless depths of her eyes. "I could hear Voldemort telling my mum to step aside and killing her when she did not obey."  
  
The beautiful face became frightening pale as the teacher's body went rigid. "My God", she whispered, her blue eyes turning dark. And then in a spasm, she threw her head back and began to laugh hysterically. **************************************************************************** **** I always wanted to write a cliff-hanger ^^ 


	4. The long dark teatime of the Soul II

Chapter 4: The long dark teatime of the soul II  
  
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First of all I'd like to apologize that I took so long to update. But (for once!!!) I have an excuse: I was forced to write 25 damn pages on the topic of some bloody kid getting a faulty house as a birthday present for university, which stole quite an amount of my precious time. I'll try to update more regularly from now on (please not the careful use of the word "try"...)  
  
Isidra - DANKE SCHÖN!!! Du bist und bleibst mein Lieblingshäschen!!!!!  
  
Mrs. Snape - Slytherin sympathizer? I wonder what made you think so ^_^  
  
And my thanks to all other reviewers!!!  
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The sound of the shrill laughter paralysed the boy. "Professor McGregor?" he whispered.  
  
But she did not stop, in the contrary, her body was shaking so violently from her hysterical outburst that she had obvious difficulties to get enough air to breathe. Choking, she touched her lustrous hair and began to laugh even higher as if her fingertips were blistered, before she suddenly changed into heartbreaking sobs. "Oh, Lily, Lil, Lil, did you hate me this much?"  
  
"Professor?" Harry whispered a second time, his voice trembling. "What...what happened?"  
  
As she raised her head jerkily, the boy stepped back, terrified by the cold undisguised hatred of her eyes. "What happened? You want to know what happened?" She laughed high-pitched and shrilly, the sound sending a flash of pain through Harry's head. "I have committed some unforgivable sin, that happened. And your mother, when being forced to carry out the consequences, choose death over forgiving me and the circle that began in this very halls a lifetime ago finally closed itself."  
  
With this she began to sob softly in her hands.   
  
Helplessly Harry stared at the crying woman, not knowing what to do. His eyes shot frantically through the room, desperately trying to find something that would be of a help to him, that would tell him what to do. They finally came to rest on the book.  
  
The Flowers of Evil.  
  
*Oh that. Severus borrowed it to me.*  
  
His eyes widened. Snape! Of course, Snape had been Professor McGregor's friend for years, surely he would know what reduced her to this broken being. He would know how to help her!   
  
"Professor, shall I get you Snape?" he asked carefully.   
  
She did not even look up, just continued to cry silently into her hands.  
  
Pale, the boy finally hastened out of the room, his eyes by now as frantic as the blonde ones.  
  
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As fast as he could Harry hastened through the empty corridors down to the dungeons where the entrance of Slytherin laid. He only hoped that he would find Snape in his private rooms for he had no other idea where else to look for the Potion Master. Breathlessly he finally stopped in front of the stone wall, whose trap door lead into the Serpent's House, already opening his mouth when he realized a thing he had completely forgotten in his hurry to arrive here: he did not know the password to enter.  
  
Staring blankly at the stone image, a nasty little voice in his head told him that this was just what he deserved for not having followed the Sorting Head's recommendation on his first evening in Hogwarts. Cursing himself quietly for allowing his mind to get caught up in that destructive circle again, but feeling too helpless and too desperate to shove the thought away, he suddenly heard a low silken laughter. Spinning around, he tried to catch the spot of the voice but there was nothing, only the vast corridor behind him.  
  
His eyes narrowed. Had some Slytherin observed his futile attempt to enter the dungeons? That would mean mocking with no end, so much for sure. "Hello?" he asked nevertheless. "Is there someone?"  
  
Then he heard the sound again. And this time he recognized the soothing, hissing undertone of the voice. Slowly he rose his head to the Slytherin emblem on the stone wall, green with the embroided silver snake.  
  
"Was that you?" he hesitantly hissed back in Parsel.  
  
The laughter abruptly ceased. Slowly, very slowly, the serpent's black eyes deepened, became livelier and dangerously intelligent as the silvery coils slithered over each other and gradually untangled themselves. Raising her head until she could muster Harry from head to feet, the small eyes narrowed slightly. "Now that´sss a ssssurprise", she hissed. "A human who talksss like one of usss. It hasss been a long time sssince the last of your kind passssed here."  
  
Harry's mind began to whirl. One part of his mind was simply amazed at the speaking image -he was quite sure that the other emblems never showed any sign of life- the other one saw a sudden possibility to get into Slytherin even without password. "Listen, I'd really like to talk to you, but I don't have the time now", he explained, the syllables of the alien language now flowing as easily from his mouth as if he had never spoken any other tongue. "Something happened, something bad, and I must absolutely see Snape!"  
  
"Sssnape?" The serpent began to uncoil herself lazily. "The sssilent man with the black hair and the sssad eyes?"  
  
"Yes, I guess that must be him", Harry agreed, although he wouldn't have described Snape's eyes as sad. Not really. "So please let me in!"  
  
The black eyes mustered him thoughtfully. "It´sss not your houssse", the snake hissed after a while. "You don't belong in here."  
  
"I know, but..."  
  
"I wonder why", she interrupted him, the sound of her voice by now soothingly familiar. The intelligent black eyes seemed to stare right into his soul, but Harry was not sure if he wanted to know what they, judging from the satisfied cold light appearing in them, obviously found there. "One who talksss like usss, should alssso go our waysss. Why are you not in the Ssserpent´s House, little sssnake?"  
  
Harry grew pale under the piercing glance. "Because I..."  
  
But all of a sudden the snake recoiled herself again and returned to her earlier motionless status.  
  
"What...", Harry began, but was interrupted by a far too familiar silky voice.  
  
"Trying to break into Slytherin, Potter? I must admit, this dubious talent of yours that always finds some new school rule you have not already broken before, never fails to surprise me."  
  
Harry jumped so hard he almost fell off. Staring at the distant wall, it took him one moment to recognise the black-robed silhouette with the sharp, hook-nosed profile in the dim light.   
  
"Professor Snape?" he finally asked in utter relief.  
  
The Potion Master's black eyes were as cold and depthless as usual, the ever-present sneer stretched across his lips. "So delightened to see me? Well, perhaps this will change after we'll have discussed your detention for this humble attempt of burglary with the Headmaster. I am sure Professor Dumbledore will be as interested as myself to know the reason for your..." His sentence trailed off and Harry felt long cold fingers lifting his pale and contorted face to the dim light. "What the hell happened to you, Potter?"  
  
Harry stared blankly at him, wondering how in God's name he could ever begin. Now that he had found the Potion Master, he was suddenly trembling nearly as badly as the DADA teacher had been when he left her. There seemed to be no way how he could arrange his thoughts and feelings long enough to hold down a single coherent sentence. Opening his mouth to try nevertheless, no sound came emerged from his dry throat.  
  
"Potter, answer me immediately or I will take so many points from your house that it will have problems to surpass Hufflepuff at the Housecup." In spite of the words, there was worry flickering in the depths of those icy black eyes. "I warn you, boy, if this is some mindless joke of yours..."   
  
"Professor McGregor!" The boy finally found his words back, briefly wondering why the other's body went rigid at the name. "I visited her this evening. We drank tea and she told me something about my mum and all of a sudden..." He swallowed hardly as he remembered the coldness of the teacher's sapphire blue eyes. "She got hysteric, I guess. She laughed like mad and said something about unforgivable sins and closing circles."  
  
The piercing eyes narrowed slightly as if these words were wakening up some old memory. "Continue."  
  
Harry mind was swirling with the attempt to focus on the earlier events. "She touched my scar." Again he saw the Potion Master's body freezing and again he couldn't think of a reason why. "She said something about it being Hate's Kiss and that I should be grateful not to remember the night Voldemort gave it to me." He stopped himself, feeling a fierce resentment to speak further. In spite of the blonde's praise on him, Snape had never shown him the slightest hint of understanding, let alone kindness. When there was one person on earth, he did not want to know about the vague terrors that he sometimes still felt at nighttime, it surely was the Head of Slytherin. He could just see the greasy git telling his students about famous Potter whining like a baby over the memories of his mother's death in the next Potion lesson. But then the Snape was probably the only one that knew Professor McGregor well enough to help her. And for some highly dubious reason he had been his mum's friend, so perhaps there was a faint chance that he would not act like his usual nasty self. When Harry finally made his decision, his words were not more than a barely audible whisper. "I told her I did."  
  
Something in Stapes's face changed. "You what?!"  
  
For one short moment, Harry closed his eyes, feeling as though the memories of that night were going to swallow him whole. There were voices in his head, the high pitched, cold sound of Voldemort speaking to his mother as if they were acquaintances of old...Lily's desperate pleas for mercy...his father's death and...quickly he opened the eyes again, only to be forced to stare into Snape's black ones. "Do you remember how I reacted to the Dementors in my third year?" he eventually asked, his voice hoarse.  
  
A small smirk appeared on the other's thin lips, but was forced away nearly in the same instant. "Considering the fact that your fainting was the Slytherin Common Room's favourite joke for the entire term, it would be hard to forget it", Snape finally responded dryly.  
  
Harry choose to ignore this one.  
  
"When they approached me, I could hear..." Again he had to interrupt himself, trying to remind him of the Gryffindor bravery he seemed to have lost sometime in the events of this night. Feeling Snape's glance on him, piercing, but for once not hard or glaring, he finally continued in a dull, toneless voice as though reciting the story of someone else. "I could hear Voldemort telling my mum to step aside. Hear how she refused. Hear how she screamed when he put the killing curse on her."  
  
The blood drained from Snape's face. "Dear Merlin", he whispered in a fragile voice Harry had never heard from him before. For one moment the Potion Master seemed lost in some dangerous chamber of his own thoughts, a faraway look on his features that seemed to remove his mind from this plane of reality and to transport it onto one that was only his and Harry's mother's alone. Then he snapped back, a subliminal panic in his eyes that frightened the boy even more than Professor McGregor's outburst. If Snape was afraid, the world was probably standing shortly before the apocalypse.   
  
Suddenly the Potion Master gripped his shoulders roughly. "Did you tell her this as well, Potter? Did you tell Morrigan that Voldemort wanted Lily to step aside?"  
  
Shocked by the black fire of those eyes, Harry had to resist the urge to step back. "Yes", he stuttered. "Pro...Professor, what does this mean?"  
  
"It means that you're not the only one who had lost a loved one in this war," Snape snarled, but the flicker of pain in his eyes betrayed the harsh tone of his voice. Regaining control of his expression again, he released the boy from his painful grip. "And although it is really none of your business, Potter, your new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher had lost even more than that. She had been crucially damaged more than your underexposed teenage brain can even begin to imagine and your mother's death took quite a major part in the process."  
  
"But she never..."  
  
Snape snorted derisively. "She never shows it? Potter, don't be more of an idiot than you already are!" The black eyes laid on him with the same furious impatience he showed whenever the boy botched some perfectly simple task in his class. "No matter how well she hides it behind her silliness and her easy laughter, Morrigan is carrying a pain within her you cannot even begin to understand. And tonight you managed to destroy this fragile mask of hers and I really don't know what she will do now."  
  
The harsh words send a rush of guilt through Harry's chest. His fault. These two words pondered painfully in his ears. Like always his fault. The desolate tears Professor McGregor had shed, the coldness in her usually so lovable blue eyes, somehow this was his doing.  
  
Seeing the guilt in the other one's expression, Snape's eyes softened a bit.  
"I did not say that it was your fault, Potter. This may be a miracle in itself, but for once it is not." The voice was calmer this time, almost soothing. "Neither was it Lily's or Morrigan's, I might add. It was just some very bad luck."  
  
"Please, Sir." Harry did not know what possessed him when he gripped Snape's robe. Determined he stared in the eyes of the frozen man in front of him. "Please...you owe it to my mum to tell me what happened between you."  
  
The black eyes flashed. Leaning forwards in a rather intimidating manner, Snape's face was suddenly only inches away from Harry's. "Don't dare to tell me what I owe to Lily." The silky voice did not rise in volume or pitch. Rather it got softer, lower and infinitely more deadly. "Never again tell me what I owe to Lily."  
  
His expression was profoundly intimidating, but this time Harry did not withdrew from the death glare of those icy eyes. To hell with the points he would loose his House. "Then I'll tell you that you owe it to *me*." For one moment he did not realize the restrained bitter voice that was suddenly filling the corridor. Then he realized that it was his own. "She was my mother and yet the only thing I remember about her is the way the screamed when she died. Nothing else, sir, just that. Don't you think that I have every right to know the reason for this?"  
  
To his surprise, the Professor did not take advantage of his chance to take points from him for the first time since he knew him. Instead his black eyes laid with frightening intensity on his face, their expression unreadable, beyond anything the boy could grasp. "Has Morrigan told you about the reason our friendship ended?" Snape finally asked harshly without so much as an introduction.  
  
Harry shook his head, relieved that the Potion Master had not decided to kill him right on the spot. "No, sir." He frowned a bit, trying to remember Professor McGregor's exact words. "She said...she said that it was about greatness."  
  
A little smile graced Snape's thin lips for a bare instant. "Leave it to Morrigan to reveal the whole truth without saying anything at all. She was always the best when it came to games like these." His voice sounded soft for a moment, then he waved his hand impatiently. "Anyway, when we were in our fifth year, she found a forbidden book in the library which contained the instructions for a powerful magical ritual of the darkest kind." He snorted shortly at the memory. "Being the good Slytherin that she was, she had been eager to try it, but a circle of three persons was needed to perform the magic. So she asked Lily and me to help her."  
  
Harry listened breathlessly. "And what did you say?"  
  
Snape's eyes were darker than Harry had ever seen them. "Thanks to our thrice-damned Slytherin ambition, I've been easy to convince, but your mother hesitated. She said that it was far too dangerous, a little blacker than she liked her arts." He wrinkled his nose disdainfully. "We had quite a fight about the topic but in the end, she finally agreed. And so we did it."  
  
"And you failed?"  
  
The other one shuddered at the memory. "No, we succeeded. And yet it went horribly wrong." He paused for a short moment, clutching his black robe tighter as if trying to withstand a cold only he could feel. "We awakened a power far beyond our ability to control and within the process we drew a most unwanted attention on us."   
  
The dark eyes flashed to the scar on Harry's forehead and suddenly the boy understood. "Voldemort?" he whispered.   
  
A bitter smile appeared on Snape's thin lips. "Voldemort indeed." His voice was strangely hoarse when he spoke the forbidden name. "The Headmaster never knew until I told him years later, but we drew the Dark Lord's eyes here to Hogwarts. He felt the dark power we had awoken and he knew of those who did it." Shaking his head unwillingly, he continued rather harshly. "I still have no idea how, but somehow we managed to dismiss this hellish thing we had called. Somehow we got away alive and unpunished. But it had been quite clear to me that this would not have closed the circle we had so carelessly opened with our mindless action."  
  
Harry nodded slowly in understanding. "So you thought that Voldemort would come back to get the persons, who were powerful enough to awaken such a power, to join him."  
  
Snape threw a slightly sarcastic glance in his direction. "So in spite of your lifetime quest to prove otherwise, you can do common sense, Potter", he sneered half-heartedly. "Will wonders ever cease?"  
  
Ignoring the sarcasm, the boy's mind began to whirl around. "But why did you break with my mother after this?"  
  
The Potion Master snorted. "You would not know it when you meet her, but Morrigan always tends to act like hell's own bitch when she does not feel comfortable with herself and just now she had to experience the feeling of guilt for the very first time. She did not take it too well and chose to blame Lily for everything."  
  
"And..." "You" he wanted to ask but the word died on his lips when he finally understood. Staring into Snape's ebony eyes, he felt his own widening. "You knew that Voldemort would come after you", he whispered bewildered. "You knew it and you wanted... you wanted to save my mum from this."   
  
Snape's mouth quirked into a humourless sneer. "Please, Potter, the least thing I desire is to become some kind of shining hero in your imagination. One of this kind here at Hogwarts seems to be more than enough to me."   
  
But as Harry did not turn his piercing glance away from him, his cool expression began to flicker. Obviously unable to face the sight of the questioning green eyes any longer, Snape turned them away. "If you insist to hear it, you're -for once- right. I did not want Lily to be harmed any more, so I did my best to make our friendship an unfortunate lapse in her judgment", he finally acknowledged quietly, his bitter black eyes softening for a moment, before he turned them back on the boy with hard intensity and full of undisguised self-loathing. "And indeed I was so stunningly successful that she turned her attention to your father, Gryffindor´s goddamn Golden Boy, in no time at all. James, of all people! First I have considered this just a stupid act of vengeance, but obviously I had not known Lily half as well as I thought to do."  
  
In spite of himself, a wave of pity overwhelmed Harry when he saw the savage pain in the other one's eyes. Until now he had not known that the man was capable of any feelings beside sadistic joy and nastiness. "Is this why you hate me so much?" he suddenly heard himself whisper. "Not because of my dad, but because of my mum?"  
  
Snape eyed him sharply for a moment, then he sighed with a quiet air of exasperation. "I don't hate you, foolish boy", he murmured unfriendly. "But this is neither your nor my worry at the moment."  
  
Harry felt his cheeks flaming. He had nearly forgotten about Professor McGregor and the desperate expression in those haunted sapphire eyes. Then he suddenly grew pale. "I made her think that she had set Voldemort on my mother's tracks", he uttered horrified. "She thinks that she is responsible for her death."  
  
Snape gave him an unreadable look. "Don't you have enough pain of your own, Potter? Do you so necessarily need to burden yourself with other's misery as well?" Shaking his head in a mixture of anger and exhaustion when the boy expression did not change, the older man finally sighed resigned. "If you want my advice for once, don't try to understand Morrigan. You would not be the first to fail miserably."  
  
With this he began to hurry down the corridor. Harry hesitated only for one moment before he followed him, a behaviour, Snape did not comment on until they arrived at the DADA teacher's door. "This is nothing of your business, Potter, so go."  
  
"No."   
  
"Boy, this is not the time for your Gryffindor stupidity, so please spare me the explanations I would have to give the Headmaster if he had to face you in animal form the next time..."  
  
"It's my fault that she is in this state", Harry interrupted him, not caring about how many points a behaviour like this would certainly cost his House. "I am responsible for this and I can't just look away and pretend that it was not this way. She was my mother's friend and I had no right to burden her with my pain only because I am to weak to master it alone."   
  
With this he stopped, feeling that he had said much more than he had ever intended to do. Hesitantly, he looked into Snape's eyes, not sure about what he saw there. Not the cold assessment that he got in Potions and nothing of the usual loathing. "Then come." The Potion Master finally said and opened the door.  
  
Both relieved and hesitating, Harry followed him into the room. His eyes flashed instantly to the sofa, and indeed, Professor McGregor was still sitting there in the same position he had left her in, the beautiful face buried into her hands.  
  
Snape eyed her for several moments, the expression of his face unreadable. "Morrigan?" he finally asked. His voice was soft, soothing, his words gentle and for an instant Harry understood what his mother had probably seen in him. "Morrigan, it's Severus."  
  
She looked up, her face smeared with tears, her eyes, wide and wondering as if she was merely considering things, staring at both of them in a perfect stillness that was in its way as frightening as her hysterical outburst. "Sev", she eventually greeted him, her voice broken, so different from its usual melodic tone that Harry barely recognized it as hers. Her blue eyes searched something in his black ones, visibly without success, then flashed to Harry. "He told you?"  
  
With surprising tenderness, Snape approached her and wiped her face carefully with the sleeve of his robe. "Morrigan, please listen to reason, you can't possible..."  
  
"And you don't suppose him to invent this, do you?" she interrupted him, still in the same blank voice.  
  
For one moment Snape stared at her in incomprehension, then he shook his head. "I've never known the boy to lie." He smirked shortly, but without his usual vicious pleasure. "It could be that he's just too stupid to know how, but either way I believe him."  
  
"Then you must know what this means." Still no emotion was displayed in her voice.  
  
"I know what you think that it means." He shook his head slowly, his black eyes looking slightly worried. "Morrigan, you must let it go. You can't linger in your misery forever."  
  
But already while he spoke these words, the blonde's face had undergone some ugly change; while her eyes had become smaller, her mouth, without switching at all, suddenly looked cruel for some reason. "You are the one to speak, Severus", she replied bitterly. "You, who crawls yourself into your dungeons, afraid of every human warmth and endlessly lamenting on your failures. You cannot let it go any better than me, so please spare me your lame bit of advice about how the time heals all wounds."   
  
"Morrigan..."  
  
Her expression was profoundly cold by now. "Poor Severus, such a desire to atone", she mocked him, her voice silken and seductive, yet underlined with unspeakable cruelty. The ghost of a smile appeared on her crimson lips all of a sudden. "Do you want to know the difference between us, my darling? Do you want to know what separates you and me from each other? We both have lived in the dark for over ten years by now, but in contrast to me you cannot adjust." She laughed humourlessly. "You just sit there in your self-chosen loneliness and regret everything, every failure, every sin, every mistake, every hurt you've caused out of love or hatred or hunger. You even tacked mine and Lily's names on the end of the list to set aside for your broodier moments, but it doesn't change a goddamn thing."  
  
For a long moment silence laid in the room. Nothing but silence and the beauty of her eyes.  
  
"Maybe you're right", Snape replied after a while, surprising Harry with the amount of weariness in his voice. "But can you really blame me? We all have our scars."  
  
"And not all of them heal." The coldness suddenly vanished out of her eyes, leaving nothing back but deep sympathy and understanding. Tenderly she reached out to touch his cheek. "We all learned this lesson. You, me, Lily and this poor boy I have probably scared to death tonight."  
  
Her eyes wandered to Harry, unbearable sad and full of guilt, yet indescribable beautiful. Nothing of the coldness, the hatred or the bitterness was left, only a complete honesty that was in its way strangely soothing. "I am sorry, Harry", she told him quietly. "I was not as sorry as I am now for nearly twenty years. Not since the night when I condemned your mother to a fate worse than death."   
  
The boy had to clear his throat before he could speak again. "It's okay." Feeling himself how inappropriate these words sounded at a moment like this, he added, far quieter, "It was not your fault. Professor Snape told me everything. How could you know what misery your experiment would cause? Besides", he continued barely audible, avoiding the two pairs of sapphire blue and ebony black eyes that stared at him with the same unbelieving expression. "She did not die because of you. She died for me."  
  
"No!" The word was spoken so vehemently that it made Harry's head jerk. The blonde had stood up from the sofa, shaking her head roughly, her sapphire eyes shining brightly in the candlelight.  
  
"Professor McGregor?" he whispered.  
  
Suddenly he found himself in a warm, comforting embrace. "It's not your fault, dear", the blonde murmured gently against his hair. "And you must never think this way, Harry, never, do you hear me!"  
  
Stiffening at first, for nobody had ever taken him in the arms, Harry felt himself weaken after a moment and finally he melted against the soothing comfort of those tender arms, giving himself over completely to the blonde. Memories rushed through his head in frightening speed, long forgotten memories and the sudden desperate wish that the arms that were holding him right now, were those of his mother. "I'm so sorry", he whispered, without knowing whether he was sorry for his parents to die so young, for Professor McGregor's guilt and Snape's so well hidden pain, sorry perhaps even for Tom Riddle who had never known the loving embrace of a mother as well, or simply sorry for himself.  
  
"So, you're sorry?" Although so very close to him, she seemed distant for a moment, indescribably beautiful in the firelight, the golden strands of her hair barely touching her smooth forehead, her lips parted in a beatific yet sad smile. "How every one of us loves his precious guilt", she whispered, before suddenly settling back into herself and carefully releasing him.  
  
She shot a quick, apprehensive look at Snape, their eye contact pregnant with meaning, but of what, the boy didn't know. Suddenly the familiar brilliant smile reappeared on her lips, letting her radiant blue eyes glitter like the sapphires they favoured so much. "I think I know the perfect medicine for this miserable state we are all in", she stated merrily. "A good cup of tea."  
  
As Harry only stared in utter disbelief at her, Snape sneered contemptuously. "You don't actually mean this, do you?"  
  
"Well why not?" she returned defiantly. "Tea never fails to calm down your nerves."  
  
"So?" Suspiciously, the Potion Master reached out for the cup Harry had left on the table. "Oh God, you still drink this horrible jasmine tea."  
  
"He was always like this", Morrigan confided into a still dumbfolded Harry with a twinkle. "Try to be nice to him and the only thanks you will get is his criticism."  
  
Snape frowned. "You know, Morrigan, I'm not used to people talking about me as if I'm not here."  
  
"Oh shut up, Sev, I am not in the mood for this senseless jerk act right now!"  
  
"And I think I have every right to act like I want to, considering how your hysterics have once more managed to destroy a peaceful evening of mine."  
  
"Sev, you're impossible."  
  
"Maybe so. But have you ever asked yourself the question whether you would like it if I called you Mor?"  
  
Watching the two exchanging wits with the expert ease of a often-practised dance, Harry suddenly felt the tired irritation of a teenage boy who thought that he would never get close to understand the dubious logic of adults. "No offence, but I think I'd rather go back to the Gryffindor Tower", he finally said wearily, feeling that if anything could calm his nerves just now, it would surely not be a teaparty with these two crazy Slytherins. "Another time gratefully, though."  
  
Professor McGregor beamed happily, her eyes nothing but sweetness and laughter. "I am looking forward to it."  
  
"So am I", Harry returned, the tone of his voice rather unconvincing as he moved towards the door. "I see you tomorrow."  
  
But even long after he had left the room, two pairs of blue and black eyes still lingered on the space where he had stood. "He favours Lily very much, doesn't he?" The blonde finally broke the silence thoughtfully. "A pity, the boy would have done well in Slytherin."  
  
Snape wrinkled his nose in distaste. "Well, in my eyes he takes completely after his worthless father." Seeing the doubt in her brilliant eyes, he paused, after a short while adding far quieter, "though I acknowledge that he sometimes acts just like her."  
  
Her eyes still rested on her face. "It must be hard for you", she said very softly as though trying not to hurt him with her words. "The face of the man you hated most and the eyes of the only woman you have ever loved."   
  
He closed his eyes in sudden agony. "Shut the hell up", he whispered hoarsely.  
  
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Not that I want to appear whiny (I am whiny, but this is not the point), but this chapter nearly drove me crazy. The characters simply did not do what I wanted them to do. First Snape was acting like the Overgrown Bat out of Hell, after I've changed that he was suddenly more lovable than Mother Theresa and I don't even want to begin about the problems I had with Morrigan and Harry....(yes, I know that it is insane to talk about my characters as if they had a will of their own, but I swear, they have!). However, I need a bit of support right now. So please review if you love it, review if you hate it, review if you think they were out of character, review if it doesn't make sense at all, review if I've made a mistake- and if you can think of anything I've forgotten - REVIEW! 


	5. Interlude

Chapter 5: Interlude  
Ever since I wrote the first flashback in the second chapter, I have been eager to write another one and - here it is! I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it for I am playing with the idea to add one or two more. Kindly let me know what you think about this =^_~=  
  
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Flashback 2:  
  
"I don't understand it", Sirius Black repeated for the one hundredths time this morning. "I simply don't understand it. I mean, he's Hogwarts´ slimiest, greasiest and most arrogant bastard, isn't he? So why the hell is he the chosen bosom friend of the two most beautiful girls of the entire school? Can someone please explain me the logic behind this?"  
  
"It may be because the two most beautiful girls also happen to be the strangest ones out there", Remus Lupin answered dryly, following his friend's eyes to the three persons at the end of the hall who were wildly debuting with each other at the moment. "I mean, behind her oh-so-sweet facade, McGregor is the very embodiment of all Slytherin beholds and Lily Evans was never what you called quite the normal either."  
  
"That's not true!" The third one of the group shot in. Turning brightly red at the incredulous glanced of his friends, he added quickly, "I mean, Lily's a Gryffindor, right, so she cannot be that bad. After all, we don't know anything about her." Noticing the knowing glances, Remus and Sirius exchanged, the crimson colour on his cheeks deepened. "Hey, what's there to look?" he asked defiantly.  
  
"James, James, James." Remus shook his head in mock exhaustion. "We are your best friends, right? Did you actually think that we would not notice this little crush you have developed on our pretty red-head?"   
  
James´ hazel eyes widened in shock. "That's ridiculous, Moonie", he stuttered.  
  
"It indeed is", Sirius agreed darkly. "Honestly, James, what do you think? Okay, she's cute, I don't deny her that. By Merlin, she's one of the hottest chicks I've ever laid my eyes upon, but that does not change the fact that we are speaking about Lily Evans. Lily Evans! The Ice Princess, remember?"  
  
"Could you possible be any louder? I am not sure if really anyone in the Hall can hear you", James whispered through tightly clenched teeth.   
  
Of course Sirius did not listen to that. "And to top it all, there is her highly dubious relationship with Snape. I really don't want to sound like that old gossiper Bertha What-is-her-name-again but even the Slytherins whisper that the two of them have recently moved beyond the casual-friends stage!" He snorted contemptuously. "It's probably only a matter of time before someone sees them making out up there on the Astronomy Tower during a blizzard or a freak lightning storm!"  
  
"Padfood", Remus interrupted him softly, seeing the furious expression on James´s face. Then he turned towards his friend, trying very hard to sound reasonable. "But Sirius is not this wrong, though. Lily has always been...different. And if you want proof of my words, you must only look to the other end of the hall."  
  
With this he pointed to the place where Lily was still standing together with Snape and McGregor. By the morning light, the Muggle-born´s hair glimmered a rich dark red while she listened to something Morrigan was explaining at the moment. Her face, like always, was impassive and undeniably beautiful in a lovely youthful way, while her brilliant, impossibly green eyes narrowed thoughtfully, absorbing her friend's words but giving no hint of her own true response.   
  
"Do you see what I mean, James?" Remus asked softly. "A girl that always shields her feelings and emotions from the outside world. A Gryffindor that searches some Slytherins´ company and refuses to exchange more than a few words with her own Housemates. You would never be able to understand her, no matter how hard you tried. She would always be the eternal secret of an alien being to you and you can't possibly want that."  
  
James laughed, but it sounded rather forced. "You sound like Trelawney, Moonie!"   
  
"There he's absolutely right", Sirius agreed. "´The eternal secret of an alien being´, Merlin, where do you pick up such shit?"  
  
"You two are ignorants, that's all", Remus pouted in return.  
  
"Ignorants?" Both of the friends echoed.  
  
The other one rolled his eyes. "Or childish, immature, brash and uncouth if you like this better!"  
  
In this moment, Severus began to laugh silkily at something the red-head had just said, his black eyes glittering in obvious amusement.  
  
Sirius snorted at the sight. "Always sweet to see how the Lord of Grease gets all soft and fuzzy when being with the Ice Princess, isn't it?" Then he shook his head. "I'll take everything back what I said, Remus, you were right. There's no way anyone could ever understand the three of them."   
  
"And this from someone who once claimed that he would never back down from a challenge", James said lightly, but his friends knew him well enough to hear the tense undertone. Then he wrinkled his nose. "But you two have a point. I actually don't understand what she sees in the Greasy Git and the Wicked Witch."  
  
As if their talking about them had drawn them, the little group suddenly began to move towards the Gryffindor table.  
  
Remus sighed heavily. "And there goes the chance of having a peaceful morning once again."  
  
But before any of his friends could return something, the far too familiar silky voice of Severus already sneered across the table. "By Merlin, you three look like shit. A little behind in your beauty sleep?"  
  
The three Gryffindors sighed in unison.  
  
"Is there anything you want, Snape?" Sirius drawled impatiently. "Or are you and your endearing unholy family just pestering the air here for the pure fun of it?"  
  
Severus' pale face screwed up into a sour squint. "If you have failed to notice until now - which I consider highly possible regarding your usual stupidity -, the bloody castle does not belong to you, Black. I can stand wherever I like to."  
  
"And so you choose to honour us with the pleasure of your company", Remus concluded, his voice heavy with irony. "Well, we would invite you and goldy-locks to sit down, but unfortunately the Hogwarts table does not offer the pints of blood you prefer for breakfast."   
  
Morrigan arched a perfectly plucked eyebrow. "Your vampire jokes are getting lamer and lamer every time I hear them, Lupin", she remarked casually, not even bothering to look directly at him. "Besides I'm just about as interested in sitting at your table as I am in pitching a tent in Trelawney´s Tower; Severus and me were just accompanying Lily."  
  
With this she turned to her friend, who had observed the little exchange in silence, her flawless face giving no sign whether it amused or simply bored her to death.   
  
Remus raised an eyebrow at the sight of the two witches, thinking that Sirius had not been wrong when claiming them to be the most beautiful girls of the entire school. With their jewel-like eyes, their shining hair, a pale and creamy skin and bodies that could probably cause entire Quidditch teams to collide in the air, Morrigan McGregor and Lily Evans possessed a perfection that was normally just found in magazines.   
  
But then what he had said about their being strange had hit home as well like their following discussion showed him once more.   
  
"Promise me to think it over, Lil." Morrigan asked, a bit curt.  
  
The pretty red-haired took a seat next to Sirius, pushing her flaming hair out of her cool, flawless face with complete carelessness while watching her friend with that level, somewhat ironic gaze she was famous for. "If you like so", she returned quite bored. "But since I won't change my opinion, I don't see any real point in this."  
  
A petulant pout reformed the blonde's lovely full lips. "But why not?" she asked very distinctly, judging from the unnerved tone of her voice not for the first time this morning. "Why. The. Hell. Not?"  
  
"You mean why I resist to risk my life in order to help you overcoming your usual start-of-term boredom?" The green-eyed girl answered with another question, her clear voice full of unspoken sarcasm. "If you'll pardon my honesty, Morrigan, who cares if you are bored? I am bored all the time, and nobody gives it a second thought."  
  
"You are just boring, period. There's no cure for that."  
  
Severus rolled his eyes at this little exchange of wits. "Do you two realize that your ever repeating disputes are getting rather annoying with the time?"  
  
Spinning around, the blonde's sapphire blue eyes glared angrily at the dark-haired boy. "Well, Sev, why don't you try to convince her then?", she shot back, obviously at the end of her tether. "You're the only one she ever listens to, anyway!"   
  
The boy only smirked coolly. "I know you two better than to interfere in your cat fighting", he returned dryly. "Don't expect me to say anything that anyone could call an opinion."  
  
Now Morrigan looked as if she were ready to kill them both on the spot.   
  
"What devilish thing are you plotting this time, McGregor?" Sirius hindered her from saying whatever nasty remark already laid on her tongue. His expression displayed a mixture of amusement and vicious curiosity. "Trying to find new victims to satisfy your blood thirst? Or is Evans just refusing to help you with your coffin?"  
  
The blonde sighed annoyed. "Black, why don't you get yourself a life of your own, instead of always put your deformed nose into things that are absolutely none of your business?"  
  
"Because nothing is as amusing as watching you using your highly developed talent of manipulating and deceiving people and turning on your charm at all the right moments for your own personal gain", Remus answered for his friend, his tone teasingly.  
  
A little smirk formed itself on the blonde's full lips. "Wow, Lupin, almost 65% of that was an actual compliment", she retorted in mock surprise. "Is that a personal best?"   
  
Ignoring this, the smile on Remus´s lips widened. "Although I have to confess that I pity those you leave behind, McGregor", he continued in exactly the same tone. "Honestly, this poor Ravenclaw was on the verge of suicide when you decided to let him fall last month."  
  
Morrigan blinked. "What the hell are you talking about?"  
  
Severus rolled his eyes. "The brain-scattered excuse of a Prefect you flirted shamelessly with in order to get him to write your Transfiguration essay", he reminded her dryly. "By the way the greatest idiot you have ever wasted your time on and regarding the ever increasing number of broken hearts you leave behind on your way, that really has to say something."   
  
"You are the one to talk!" The blonde shot back. Her sapphire blue eyes wandered from him to Lily, a playfully cruel smile appearing on her perfect lips. "You and Lil, you love to talk about being logical and rational, but there had not been more than about ten logical minutes between you since you've met!"  
  
The dark-haired boy gave her his deadliest glare, but Morrigan only smiled obtusely, pushing her luxurious hair from her face, as she tilted her pretty little head to let her eyes dance with sinister intent. "By the way, Sev, I've heard some quite interesting rumours about you and Lily from Bertha, but I'm not quite sure whether I should believe them for I cannot imagine that you two would have denied your best friend such...delicate news."  
  
"Right, Snape, we all like to hear some more about the touching relationship between you and the Ice Princess!" Sirius shot in, a vicious grin on his lips. "So is it true that you two did the dirty thing while after attending a Vampire Meeting in the Forbidden Forrest?"  
  
While the boy turned his death glare towards him, this time not nearly as impressive because of his suddenly blood-red cheeks, James snorted loudly. "Please, Sirius, I am eating." The level of coldness his voice displayed made his friend blink in surprise.  
  
Severus´ black eyes narrowed. "And that with such a lack of skill that I'm once more grateful not to be in your mind-lacking House", he remarked dryly. "Honestly, Potter, is it that hard to use a spoon decently or is it just one rebellious act of yours to lick your fingers after eating your marmalade roll?"  
  
"Hey, calm down", Remus interfered quickly, seeing how James turned furiously red. "There is no sense in..."  
  
"Don't Lupin", the pretty red-haired girl on Sirius´ interrupted him, a sparkle of mischief apparent in her brilliantly green eyes. Pushing her flaming hair out of her forehead, she shot an ironic glance in Severus´ direction. "You can't take Sev the chance to use his new assortment of looks on his self-chosen arch-nemesis. He had not even used all his nineteen different sneers by now."  
  
Remus began to choke. "You counted them?" he asked incredulously.  
  
Lily began to laugh, the clear, melodic sound finally getting the two still quarrelling rivals to shut up. It was not every day that Lily Evans showed a feeling, least of all cheerfulness, this openly.  
  
The corner of the red-head's mouth quirked when she noticed the undivided attention she had now. "Blessed silence", she commented on it sarcastically. "I just wonder if it will prevail long enough for me to end my breakfast in peace."  
  
Severus tried to fix her with a death glare, but had to laugh in spite of himself when she just raised an eyebrow in complete carelessness. "Sometimes I am tempted to hex you", he told her gently.  
  
"I could say the same about you", James muttered, obviously infuriated by this open display of affection.  
  
Severus sneered before turning to Morrigan. "If you have to overcome your boredom somehow, why don't you think of a solid plan to get rid of that idiot over there?" he demanded sarcastically, pointing at James as though the Gryffindor were not hearing every word he spoke.  
  
"I don't see why I should waste my talent on James Potter, when something along the lines of you just being yourself should do the trick as well", the blonde shot back. "I don't mind beating the stupid Lions in the battle of wits once in a while, but this childish rivalry between you and the Golden Boy is really getting ridiculous!"  
  
"Oh, but you your whole female power, take-back-the-night thing is perfectly normal?"  
  
"Have you ever considered to act a bit more human, Sev? People might mistake you for an overgrown bat."  
  
"And have you ever considered to act more like a witch instead of a bitch?"  
  
"See-eev!"  
  
"You know, I hate it when you say my name in that way!"  
  
"And I hate it when you're behaving like an insufferable git, which means that I'm constantly irritated. Whom of us do you think has the worse end?"  
  
"Do you realize that you have this same conversation every day?" Lily asked flatly, the expression of her beautiful green eyes somewhat annoyed. "It's getting boring."  
  
"Oh, I find it rather entertaining", a cold male voice said, judging from the undertone in his young baritone highly amused by the small battle of wits occurring in that very room.   
  
Everybody of the group spun around to spot the source of the voice.  
  
Sirius spot it first and, naturally enough, began to groan melodramatically. "If this isn't Lucius Malfoy himself. Have I missed the calendar saying something about today being the ´Day of the Jackass´?"   
  
With flawless grace, rarely seen in a teenage boy of this age, a pale-faced blond stepped forth from the dark hallway, just shooting a cold glance into Sirius's direction that clearly indicated such behaviour to be absolutely beneath him, before turning towards his beautiful blonde housemate. "I was hoping to find you here, Morrigan", he greeted her, his voice oddly agreeably as he leaned down to kiss her cheek lightly.  
  
The blonde laughed, the sound raspy and full of promise. "And like always I am pleased to please you, Lucius", she returned flirty, her blue eyes glitting amused.  
  
Lucius smirked shortly. "Charming as ever", he returned smoothly, then turned to his other Housemate. "How do you do, Severus?" he greeted him. His cold eyes wandered over to Lily at his side and hesitated for a short moment, before he acknowledged her presence with a short nod. "Lily." Keeping his young baritone under the strict constraints of politeness, it displayed nothing of his true feelings on the Muggle-born.  
  
Lily's green eyes narrowed ever so slightly until they began to gleam like emeralds, an almost unnatural colour against the flaming hair and the white skin. "Lucius", she replied evenly.  
  
For one short moment the two held their stares, many things not spoken in order to keep the fragile peace between them, many things still hidden, before they turned away in exact the same moment as though they had had a secret contract about it.  
  
Himself again, Lucius turned back towards Morrigan and showed her his heart-wrenching perfect smile. "Anyway, I wanted to talk to you, dear." Nodding to the Gryffindors, the timbre of his voice changed. "Although I would prefer to do it in a place more...integer."  
  
"Oh, Malfoy, do you want to imply that we are not integer? I'm shocked", James said dryly. "That's breaking my heart, honestly."  
  
"Oh, but you must admit that we poor earthlings are clearly beneath these aristocratic higher-beings", Remus remarked sarcastically. "Isn't just watching  
this elegant way they treat each other making you long to be part of their unholy family? Who ever cared about sincerity anyway?"  
  
Morrigan rolled her eyes as if she were asking herself how on earth such morons could ever have gotten a Hogwarts letter in the first place. It was an expression the Marauder had already seen many times on the beautiful face. "I suppose we should just head to our own table then", she proposed. "Are you coming, too, Sev?"  
  
Severus just waved his hand. "Go ahead, I'll follow in no time at all."   
  
As the two Slytherins walked over to their own table, Lily's eyes finally lost something of their coldness as they flashed in a loathing nobody of the three Gryffindors could understand. "He seeks power", she said very quietly as though addressed more to herself than to her friend. "Power and power alone. He does not care about anything or anyone beside this. This is not even the usual Slytherin ambition, he is truly heartless."  
  
"You're paranoid, Lil." Severus shook his head. "Lucius might not be a saint, but he's not the devil you want to see him as, either."   
  
But the girl was not listening to him. Chewing her lips absentmindedly, she combed her slender fingers through her shining red mane, as if trying to get her hair ridden of any knots like a self-conscious school girl, the expression of the brilliant green eyes distant. "He would do it without hesitating", she muttered thoughtfully. "And Morrigan might very well confide in him if I continue to refuse her my help."  
  
Severus shrugged. "Possible." His eyes narrowed. "Why are you so sternly against the idea, anyway? I intended to ask you that already the whole time."  
  
She merely shook her head, taking a perfunctory sip of tea. "Perhaps I am just scared."  
  
"Don't try to fool me, Lily." Severus shot her a quick tender smile. "You are not scared of anything and you know that I know it."  
  
Her rare wintry smile formed itself slowly on the other one's full lips, changing her frosty self into sweetness and mischief. "I always forget how well you know me, Sev", she returned in the same unconcerned tone she always used, yet with an undertone full to bursting with tenderness. For one moment they held each other's stare, their eye contact pregnant with unspoken emotions, then James broke the magic of the moment with a disgusted sneer that sounded more like Snape than like himself. "Can't you flirt anywhere else?" he asked with icy measuredness. "I am loosing my appetite when I listen to you."  
  
Severus´ black eyes narrowed. "Then why don't you simply go and play Quidditch for God knows this is the only bloody thing you're good for."  
  
"Who is standing at whose breakfast table?" James hazel eyes laid with undisguised loathing on Snape.  
  
"Bugger off, Potter, last time I checked this was still a public place!"  
  
"Then leave for another public place! If you're that eager to go on our nerves further, you can always send us an owl."  
  
"We are in a sour mood this morning, aren't we?"  
  
"No wonder with your greasy self right in front of me!"  
  
A cold little smirk appeared on the other boy's lips. "Don't mistake me for an idiot, Potter", he said quietly, his voice silky and cruel. "This is not about our usual rivalry, isn't it? It's not even about me."  
  
James grew pale. "What the hell do you mean?"  
  
The other boy's dark eyes narrowed even more as they wandered from James to Lily. "It means that I am not totally blind", he returned calmly. With this he turned around to go. "I'll see you in Transfigurations, Lil."  
  
The girl's eyes were absolutely unreadable, beyond anything the boys at her side could grasp, the sweet line of her mouth determined. "Severus?"  
  
He turned around, an eyebrow raised questioningly. "Yes?"  
  
"Tell Morrigan that she can count on me."  
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We are born at sunset and we die ere morn,  
And the whole darkness of the world we know,  
How can we guess its truth, to darkness born,  
The obscure consequence of absent glow?  
Only the stars to teach us light. We grasp  
Their scattered smallnesses with thoughts that stray,  
And, though their eyes look through night's complete mask,   
Yet they speak not the features of the day.  
  
~ Fernando Pessoa  
  
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*Tell Morrigan that she can count on me.*  
  
Her words still echoed through Lily's mind when she climbed the steps up to the Astronomy Tower as she had done thousands of times in the last five years. When she got outside on the platform, she inhaled the fresh cold night air deeply, like always invigorated by the feeling of the coldness on her skin. Walking to the edge of the platform and gazing out into the eternity of the night sky, her rare wintry smile slowly formed on her lips. All day she had been desperately waiting to get out here, out on her little sanctuary where she felt at home like almost nowhere else on this world.   
  
Leaning on the railing, Lily's green eyes smiled at the familiar patterns of the stars and finally lingered on the brightest light on the sky.  
  
The moon, always her favourite planet, the soothing guide, sister to Earth, lover to all, yet eternally alone in the sky. Like herself the moon was good at hiding when she found it necessary, but would bask in the afterglow of the day when her time to shine came.  
  
Lily's smile widened. Impossible to explain to people how much of a mother Luna was to her. Impossible for any Gryffindor to grasp that one of their own Housemates felt safe and at home in the dark. That it made her want to sing.   
  
Pushing her luxurious hair out of her smooth forehead absent-mindedly, her cat-like eyes narrowed a bit. Lily knew that she had never been a person that was easy to understand. Never somebody people liked to befriend, always a loner that was considered beautiful but cold. It never had mattered to her much and she had stopped thinking of it ever since Morrigan and Snape had stepped in her life, but sometimes, at very seldom occasions she wondered what her life might be like if she were different. More than other girls her age. Less dark.  
  
The sound of footfalls on the stones behind her startled her out of her reverie. She knew who it was without turning around by the way he took two stairs with every step. Her smile grew softer. "Severus", she greeted him quietly.  
  
"I thought I might find you up here." She felt him walking to her side, and stepped a bit aside to create more space for him.  
  
"Guess I'm becoming predictable", she eventually returned, glancing at him over her shoulder.  
  
"You?" Laughing quietly, he rested his hand on the parapet next to hers. "Never. Every time I think I've finally come to understand you completely, you'll always manage to surprise me."  
  
She did not reply anything, but placed her slender hand gently on top of his. He did not flinch back like he would have done with any other person, which caused her eyes to sparkle satisfied. Severus did not like to be touched any better than herself, but with the two of them it had always been different.  
  
"By Merlin, Lily. For all you look like a walking flame, you really feel like ice", she heard him murmuring softly. Gently wrapping his arms around her waist from behind, he settled his robes around the two of them and pressed the full length of his long, thin form against hers.   
  
Relaxing a bit and leaning back against his chest, Lily brought her hands inside the cocoon he has created to warm them and closed her eyes for a moment, feeling as sheltered and safe as she only ever could in his arms. It were these moments she felt truly alive. "How has Morrigan reacted when you brought her the good news?" she murmured after a while.  
  
He snorted shortly, still so close to her that she could feel the humid touch of his breath against the side of her neck. "You know Morrigan. She was absolutely pleased like always when she accomplishes her will and acted accordingly sweet around everybody. So sweet acutally that she managed to cause Rosier a nose bleeding."   
  
Lily did not laugh like she would have done under other circumstances. "Hmmm."  
  
Turning her around, but not releasing her from his warm embrace, Severus eyed her sceptically. "Don't ´hmmm´ me, Evans, you know that I haven't fallen for this trick in years", he informed her, trying to sound strict. Then he shook his head in incomprehension. "Come on, Lily, will you tell me now why you were so sternly against performing the ritual? You never drew back from a challenge before."   
  
"That was different."   
  
"So?"  
  
Sighing, she turned around again, her eyes once more focused on the night sky above her, trying to find reassurance in the bright lights. "We have done dark magic before, Severus, I don't deny that", she said after a while, her voice as calm as ever. "And it had been....thrilling that I acknowledge. But it was merely done for the sole benefit of showing us if we were able to do it. It was a game. But this here is about power."   
  
The innocent confusion on his face made her shake her head unwillingly. "Have I told you anything about my summer holiday, Sev?" she suddenly asked.  
  
He frowned, obviously surprised at this sudden change of topic. "No, but..."  
  
"It had been terribly", she interrupted him, the tone of her voice colder than before. "Nothing to do but to stay with my Muggle family, back in a Muggle town surrounded by Muggles. I never had a problem with it before I went to Hogwarts, but now...", her voice almost sound dry. "I don't belong there anymore. I don't understand them anymore and they cannot even come close to comprehend anything about me. I want increasingly to live around magic. With magic. And therefore I've always agreed to participate in the little games you and Morrigan like to play so nonchalantly every once in a while in the past."  
  
Firmly she freed himself from his embrace and began to walk back and forth on the small platform, driven by an anger whose source was unknown even to her. "I have my questions", she said after a while. "There are things I must know. I cannot live without some embracing philosophy, but it has nothing to do with old beliefs in gods or devils or in the new belief the Dark Lord demands from his followers." Stopping in front of him, she narrowed her eyes, daring him to break her gaze. "I want to know about the secrets of the universe. I want to know why beauty exists and why nature continues to contrive it. I want to know it all. Perhaps that this curiosity leads me away from the people around me, but it is the lantern by which I see the road I travel."   
  
Judging from the frown on his forehead, Severus tried very hard to understand this. It almost made Lily smile, the way he always tried to comprehend her, the way he so often succeeded when everybody else failed. Her soulmate.  
  
His black eyes eventually narrowed as they looked thoughtfully into her own. "I still don't see what is different this time." He paused for a moment, his fingers tapping on the parapet in an imaginary rhythm. "You act, you deal with the consequences, you learn from them, you avenge yourself. Then you move on. That's what we've always done."  
  
Despite herself, she felt the corner of her lips quirk. "´And power-hungry Slytherin loved those of great ambition´", she returned sarcastically yet gentle as though trying not to provoke the boy with her words. "That's how it always been with you and Morrigan. You thrill at the possibility of power, at the possibility that a grand and beautiful being could be utterly evil. You long for greatness above the things around with the same egoistic hunger I fear in Lucius. And this is why I refused to participate in taking a role in Morrigan´s newest plot. I seek knowledge, neither power nor greatness."  
  
The black-haired boy looked puzzled. "But what is knowledge without power?" he asked in honest confusion.  
  
Staring into his so familiar black eyes, the little smile on Lily's lips widened. "You wouldn't understand even if I bothered to explain it to you, my darling Slytherin", she returned gently. "And I'm not in the mood to discuss our inter-house differences just now, anyway."  
  
With this, she cupped her hand around the nape of his neck, dipped her head and grazed his lips with her own.  
  
Immediate connection, like always.  
  
Almost instinctively one of Severus´s hands crawled up her back as the boy gave some soft sound that was very like him against her lips. She could all but hear the words.  
  
Closing her eyes, she pulled him down on top of her, sinking deep into his embrace. She did not know what it was, but every time Severus held her like this, all that mattered in her world was the feeling of the soft lips moving against her own, the daring tongue exploring the cavern of her mouth, the heat of the firm and slender body pressed against her, the way the boy was entwining his fingers in her red hair. In moments like this she did not need anything else and all her dreams of knowledge did not mean anything to her anymore.  
  
A soft moan cut the silence reigning on the platform, and she wouldn't have been able to tell if it was his or hers.  
  
Not that it would be of any importance.  
  
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	6. All because of a pair of green eyes

Chapter 6: All because of a Pair of green Eyes  
Okay, this chapter is rather short but perhaps this will encourage people to read it to the end and to review (my hopes never die as you can see here). The next chapter will not contain any flashbacks but concentrate on the relationship between Snape, Harry and Morrigan. I just could not resist this one here...^^  
  
Isidra - Hab ich schon erwähnt, dass ich mich immer wie ein kleines Kind über deine reviews freue?! Ganz ehrlich!!   
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Snape looked idly out at the rows of students before him, all working - for the   
time being anyway - silently. He fingered the root in his hand absently, one more time wondering what on earth had given Albus that pathetic idea of bringing the houses nearer together with joint lessons. As far as he could see, the only result of this idiocy was that Potter's faithful sidekick-in-crime, also known as Ron Weasley, and Lucius´s offspring would surely loose control over their brain-scattered selves one day and finish each other off. Not that it would be a great loss to the world, but who would have to bear the guilt for the two dead students in his dungeons? Him. Like always. Life really wasn´t fair.   
  
Which made him think of the bane of his existence, who was right now working together with the incompetent Longbottom boy in front of him.   
  
As usual, his thin lips curled into a sneer when his gaze met Lily's son. Sometimes Snape didn't know his feelings on the boy. He would sell his soul a second time to have him out of this school and on the same time he would die to protect him. For someone as dependent of control and rationalism as him, this turmoil of emotions the insufferable boy caused in him was simply unbearable - and all because of a pair of green eyes.   
  
As if he had felt the weight of his stare, Potter suddenly looked up and stared at him with precisely these pure, clear and luminous eyes that he remembered so very well for they had been the eyes that sustained him once. For one moment they tried to stare each other down, then the boy looked away, frowning.  
  
Snape's eyes narrowed. Something about Potter was different. Downright unfair as he had been to him in his time here at Hogwarts, there had also always been a core to Harry's resentment that was not of his own creation, a suspicion based on nothing more than the first glance that had passed between them. True, he had not hesitate to fuel it generously, but he had always known that he had not given it birth and could therefore not erase it even if he wished to. It had always there between them, every time when the boy's eyes flashed in defiance or when he botched some perfectly simple task in his class so spectacularly that the Potions Master would have judged it as wilful failure if he had not known where the boy had inherited this lack of talent from. But ever since this evening at Morrigan's two weeks ago, something about this familiar loathing had changed; something in the green eyes had become doubting and in his confusion, the boy resembled his mother like never before.   
  
Snape forced his eyes away from Potter. As much as he hated to admit it, it had become hard to detest the brat after seeing the longing, yet heart-wrenching hopeless expression on his face when Morrigan had embraced him with her usual stupid spontaneity. So much pain. He wondered who else has ever been given such a glimpse of Gryffindor´s Golden Boy. He wondered if their was a boy beyond the scar after all.  
  
Irritated at the course his thoughts had taken, he stood up abruptly. "Potions", he explained, not really expecting any of the ignorant children in front of him to understand. "You all know that they only work with the infusion of inherent magic, but the process is just that: a process; a series of precise steps that lead from one thing to another. Logic, potions is just about logic."  
  
As he swept around, Longbottom gave a frightened squeak and dropped the Dragon Liver he was working with onto the floor, leaving a big, green splotch on the stone.  
  
Snape almost smiled in satisfaction. Nothing worked quite as good to calm his nerves as taking points from the walking catastrophe area.  
  
"Well, but it seems that even logic fails when it comes to the utter incompetence of Mr. Longbottom", he continued nastily. "I must admit that the consequence of his lacking talent sometimes nearly impresses me. Of course", he made a dramatic pause. "this does not free him from cleaning up the classroom this afternoon in his spare times. Or from the ten points he had lost Gryffindor with his foolishness."  
  
While the Gryffindors tried to kill him with their glaring, most of his kids began to laugh, the loudest of course Draco Malfoy.   
  
Snape's eyes lingered on the silver-haired boy with disgust for one short instant. Foolish boy. All of Lucius´s cruelty and charm, nothing of his subtlety. If not for the fact that his father would certainly show up in his dungeons if he ran out of control before this brat graduated, he would...Again he snorted, much to the discomfort of his students, who all made themselves a little smaller behind their desks, obviously trying to avoid his attention.  
  
The obvious fear this reaction displayed suddenly made him thought of Lily again. She had never been afraid of him, not even in his darkest moods. He remembered how she had laughed at his gloominess once at school; he hadn't minded, if only because her laugh had not been mocking, but light and beautiful. *Honestly, Sev, the world wouldn't end if you dropped the intimidation act every once in a while.* Her comment had left him without words, but her delightful laugh had eased its way to his heart. He would have done everything for her just then. And then James came and all he had to do was his bloody cheerful self to change his Lily into a giggling stranger...  
  
His eyes landed on Harry again, and narrowed at the sight. "Potter!" he sneered, deciding to let his frustrations out on his favourite victim. It had always worked well in the past, after all. "After your neighbour has already proven himself incompetent of keeping his ingredients on the table, let us see if the last hour was a waste of my time or if you actually managed to do something that might be of use."  
  
The boy looked up and again Severus had to stare right into those brilliant green eyes which were the exact copies of his mother's eyes; eyes of a colour that surpassed even the finest emeralds.  
  
He felt himself stiffen, as he suddenly recalled how Lily had come to him two days after the ritual -after two days of dreadful silence. He still remembered how painfully conscious he had been of her presence, of her perfume, of her red hair glowing in the shadows, of the rumpled black robe, of all of her and everything that had happened between them...  
  
Forcing his thoughts back, he passed Potter without a second glance at him to look into the cauldron. To his surprise, everything was just like it should. Well...  
  
The green eyes were staring at him questioningly, questioningly and impossibly green.   
  
"Not totally bad", he heard him saying after a short moment of silence. He thought for one moment if he could have said this in a somewhat meaner way. Well, probably, but nobody could be on top of his nastiness all day. Not even him. "Can you also tell me which ingredients you need for a Intersaeptum Solution? Well, Potter?"   
  
The annoying Know-it-all Granger girl shot her hand strait up into the air and began to wave frantically while Weasley at her side just rolled his eyes before glaring, but Harry just looked at him dead on, not flinching yet not glaring, as he recited the correct answer.  
  
Snape blinked. Potter had ...learned?   
  
"What a pleasant novelty, so you can read more than the newest articles on your fame", he finally said. His silken voice sounded like a purr but he knew that his words didn't hold much reassurance. Staring right into the beautiful green eyes, he felt himself tempted to tell the boy how much he favoured his mother inspite of the wild black hair and the ridiculous glasses.   
  
Then he swept around, cursing himself for his foolishness.  
  
No, life wasn't really fair to him these days, and it wasn't helping at all that Potter's eyes were unfairly, brilliantly and impossibly green. "Five points to Gryffindor", he finally heard himself saying quietly, just too aware of the incredulous looks that were shot into his back at this historical first.  
  
He sneered. What did five points matter anyway - Longbottom would lose them within the next three minutes.  
  
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Flashback 3:  
  
He was standing with his back to the window as if he had spent the last hours staring outside when she stepped into his room. "Lily", he greeted her blandly.  
  
She was tempted to approach him but the expression on his face held her back. "Severus", she whispered frightened. He had never looked at her like this, like she was some sort of disgusting insect invading his private space.  
  
The boy's face was blank as he measured her coldly. "I think you got my letter", he said after a while, his voice still revealing nothing of his emotions. "I don't see any reason for you being here."  
  
Lily blinked, startled by this sudden and unexpected reaction. "Well, what did you expect me to do?" she finally found her speech back, her voice strangely hoarse. "First you and Morrigan refuse to speak a single word to me for two days and then you tell me in a letter that you want to break up with me for good without any explanation. Did you actually expect me to accept this?"  
  
For one moment he stared at her as though he could not believe his ears. Then he snorted loudly. "I thought you had enough common sense to comprehend but it seems that I have underestimated your Gryffindor stubbornness once more." His voice was colder than ice by now, his piercing black eyes narrowed. "You will never accept. And if it's the fate of all mankind, Lily Evans will fight it."  
  
Refusing to cringe back at the cruelty of his tone, she balled her hands into fists. "I don't understand."  
  
The corner of his mouth quirked into a pejorative smirk. "Oh, come on, Lily, you are a clever girl, it's not that hard." He laughed derisively. "I am a Slytherin, you are a Gryffindor, I am pure-blood and you, if you forgive me my rudeness, are nothing but a Mudblood. Let's face reality for one, it would never work with us, so I decided stop this childish charade as long as there is still time to do so."  
  
She felt like she'd been slapped in the face. Staring at the boy she had thought to know completey, her mouth halfway opened in shock. "You can't mean that," she whispered as she tried to calm his pounding heart. "Severus, you cannot mean that."  
  
He closed his eyes and turned back to the window. "I do."   
  
For one eternal seeming moment, she stared at his back, feeling how her body began to shiver violently.  
  
"Why won't you just tell me why you're doing this, Severus?" she finally asked, trying to sound as casually as possible. "I understand Morrigan's need to sulk but you...you almost behave as though you had stopped..." Her voice stopped abruptly as she couldn't bring herself to finish her sentence. Her knuckles were white, her fist rigidly clenched. "Sev?"   
  
He did not answer.  
  
"Is it because of...him?" she prompted, desperately trying to find a rational explanation for his coldness. "Is the Dark Lord somehow the reason for all this?"  
  
He still didn't answer.   
  
"Then say that you don't love me." Her words came out quiet and hurt. "Say it and I swear I'll never bother you again."  
  
For a brief moment Severus froze, his back still facing Lily. She felt her fists trembling violently as she recalled the night she had lost her virginity to him, their naked bodies fitting perfectly together, his hands hesitant and trembling as though he feared to hurt her somehow, as though she was something inconceivably precious to him. He had made her feel so safe, so secure, so loved. It could not have been a lie. It simply could not...  
  
He finally turned to her with a serene, unemotional face. "I don't love you", he said simply.  
  
Lily slowly became aware of her fingernails digging into the soft skin of her palms. For one moment she felt as if her heart had just stopped beating, as though she was not really there, not really alive, but disconnected and out of time and any place. She opened her mouth to say something, anything, but closed it again nearly instantly. Allowing the sight to imprint itself on her brain, she finally turned away from these cold black eyes. Her fists had stopped to tremble. No, she would not say anything. There would be no shouting, crying or pleading. No pathetic scene.  
  
Feeling the muscles in her neck and back tighten as she walked sedately out of his dungeons, the stairs seemed to wobble under her feet, and for a moment she thought she would faint. Then she began to run, not caring that she might drew Filch´s or Miss Norris's attention on her with her loud steps or that she did not even know in which direction she was heading. All that mattered now was that she got out, out and away. Away from these cold eyes, away from the icy voice, away, away, simply away. Several times she tripped and went flying, only to catch herself on her hands and find herself running again. ´Don't think´, she told herself. ´Don't think now, just get out of here...´  
  
Suddenly she collided with a wand of muscles. "Lily?" she heard a surprised voice calling out her name.  
  
"Who..." And suddenly James Potter's head appeared in the air above her.  
  
She cringed away two steps, staring bewildered at the shock of wild black hair before her, then she remembered.  
  
Invisibility cloak.  
  
Severus endlessly lamenting on this.  
  
Severus.  
  
A sob was trying to force its way out of her throat, but she hold it back. No tears. No pathetic scene.   
  
"Is everything okay with you?" James asked hesitantly, obviously slightly uncomfortable with the situation. Not that she could not understand this regarding the way she must been looking with the rumbled robe, the blood on her hands and her body trembling violently. Like Ophelia before she went into the water after being rejected by Hamlet.  
  
The thought nearly made her laugh hysterically.  
  
"I'm fine", she finally managed to whisper after a moment.  
  
"Obviously", he deadpanned, his honest hazel eyes now displaying open worry. So warm eyes, it crossed her mind. So different from Severus´s. The mere thought made her heart ache in pain. "You can tell me, you know", she heard Potter say after a while, his voice strangely hoarse. "Anything, I mean. I would listen."   
  
She didn't answer.   
  
"Did...did you have a fight with Snape?"   
  
She looked up quickly at him and he nodded. "I see."  
  
"Oh, do you?" she asked bitterly. "I doubt that, James. I doubt that you can understand anything about me and Severus and I doubt that you even want to."  
  
James seemed embarrassed by this cold response. "But I do", he replied, his eyes slightly hurt, but softening again as he saw her desperate expression. Tenderly he reached out to push a strand of her glowing red hair back behind her ears, his thumb, callused from all the years of Quidditch training already, resting on her cheek for one moment. "See, Lily, it might not mean much to you, but I...I care."  
  
This was the final push, this bit of unconditional kindness from a boy she had ignored ever since she had first laid her eyes upon him, what broke the last barriers of human control that had kept her rational and able to function. She dissolved into tears without regard for shame or appearance and collapsed against his chest.   
  
For one moment, she felt James stiffen, then he wrapped his arms protectively around her waist. "It's okay", she heard him whisper against her hair. "Hey, Lily, it's okay."  
  
`No`, she thought. `Nothing's okay. Nothing´s okay at all.´   
  
But it felt so good to lie still in his arms, to have him hold her, to have somebody care for her that she did not speak these words aloud.   
  
In all her sorrow mildly surprised about herself, she closed her eyes as she cuddled herself tighter against him. Perhaps, she thought already very absentmindedly, perhaps even simple human warmth was something.  
  
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	7. Darkness, bloodroses and serpent’s laugh...

Anoni: thanks for pointing out the mistake about Arthur Weasley´s age. You're completely right, there is no way he could be a year younger than Lily and James. Well, what can I say, maths just never was my subject ^^ Anyway I am grateful that there are readers like you who have obviously more talent at it!!!

And thanks to all my other reviewers!!!!!

Chapter 7: Darkness, blood-roses and serpent's laughter

Harry sighed deeply as he fell down on a chair in the almost empty library. Not that he minded the familiar atmosphere of the Gryffindors´ Common Room, but there were moments when he grew tired of the ever-so-cheerful people around him whose worst fear was to loose the Housecup, hours when he needed a bit of privacy - and this was definitely one of these times! If he had had to listen to the stupid rumours of Snape having a points-awarding twin brother or to Ron and Hermione´s well-meant but rather tiring attempts to cheer him up because he was the only Gryffindor who would stay over Christmas this year, he surely would have gone mad.

Cuddling up in his comfortable armchair, he stared blankly in the air. Entirely too much was going on at the moment. 

For once there was the memory of the fateful evening he had spent at McGregor's and the embarrassing fact that he had nearly broke down in front of Snape. Snape!

He had been prepared for humiliation to no end in the following Potion lesson, convinced that his git of a Potion Master would not think twice about using a moment of weakness of his most loathed student against him, and...nothing had happened at all. Not that Snape had been any friendlier than in the past five years but somehow Harry had gotten the infallible impression that something about his attitude had changed nevertheless; in the last two weeks he had caught his professor staring at him countless times, not glaring but thoughtfully as though he saw him for the first time or had found something in him nobody else was supposed to know about. 

*I don't hate you, foolish boy.*

Not exactly the nicest thing to say, but for a moment Harry had almost thought that Snape cared.

He shook his head angrily. Don't be a fool, he told himself fiercely. For some incomprehensible reason he was your mother's friend, but this doesn't mean that he's not the same man you knew when you first saw him in the Great Hall.

Something inside him, though, was not quite convinced.

Well, but then Snape and his once-in-a-lifetime act of kindness was not his only problem. There were the dreams which haunted him by now every second night, growing ever more intense. The boy shuddered when he thought about the latest one. 

He had been on the graveyard again, seeing the other boy standing in front of the same gravestone on which he laid down his blood-red roses every night. He had watched him approaching with a little yet sad smile on his heart-wrenchingly handsome face, the dark green eyes shining softly, the black hair curled in his neck. _I've been waiting for you, Harry_, he had spoken with great simplicity, his voice lyrical as if he were reciting some beautiful verse of an old poem.

A sudden scream had pierced the air just then, full of despair and heart-crushing grief, but Harry hadn't mind and neither had the other one. Death and pain were things they both knew very well for living close to them all the time, things that did not impress them much. _What the hell do you want, Tom?_

The dark green eyes had locked themselves with Harry's, obviously unaware of their beauty, or at least not consciously using it to dazzle, distract or quiet him. Obviously not seeing himself in Harry´s eyes, but only him. _I want *you*, Harry, _he had whispered,his voice fleeting with tenderness_. I want us to become two at this crossroad. Who could love us, you and me, as we can love each other? _

Harry had have to resist the urge to back away. _Obviously you have gone completely mad by now,_ he had shot back, unable to keep his voice under the strict constraints of coolness. _There is nothing we have in common._

_Do you really think so?_ the other one had retorted, a cold little smile on his sensual pale lips. _Poor darling, all your life you have tried to escape the inevitable. You've tried to be good and light and brave so hard and yet you always knew that a part of you would forever long for darkness and night and sin. _

Harry had closed his eyes at this, feeling a fear rising in him, as endless and dismal as any fear he had known before, any moment of disconsolate gloom when he had hugged his knees in his cupboard, afraid to even open his eyes, afraid of the darkness all around him and the endless vistas of a horror, he could not even fully remember, laying in it. _That is not true_, he had heard himself whisper. _I hate the dark. Somebody help me, this is not true._

This had caused Tom a bitter laugh. _But there is no one, Harry_, he had said with sudden heartfelt sincerity. _That's the secret of the universe, that is my cry and my message. There is no one to help us. We are born alone and we die alone. _

_Bugger off, Tom._

_You want me because we're the same, _the pale boy had insisted, a bit of his charm finally leaving his face. _You need the darkness you see in me._ _You're addicted to it._

_THAT IS NOT TRUE!_

Harry shook his head roughly and his universe slipped back into the perfect focus of reality. Embracing his knees, he stared into the air and sighed resigned. In spite of what he said, he could not help but feeling a part of himself agree with the boy's words. He did not desire power over people, and there was no way he would ever hurt somebody he loved, but different from all other people around him, he felt that the dark was an essential part of him, that it was much less scarier than the light which forced you to look at things you'd better ignored...

He moaned quietly at the course of his thoughts. Sometimes he really, really wished that he would not be able to remember his dreams. He never got any good ones to compensate for all the others.

His forehead frowned as he eventually tried to find some solution for his problem with the grim determination and never-ending resources of hope Gryffindor had taught him in the past five years. He had already asked Hermione about Dreamless Potions, but her answer had not been very encouraging. According to her, these potions were only to be made by the most advanced Potion Master since they did not just affect the human physics, but their very psyche. The only one in Hogwarts able to make them, the girl had concluded thoughtfully, was probably Snape.

Harry snorted sarcastically. So he had just to go to the Potion Master and tell him `Sorry, sir, but do you happen to have a Dreamless Potion for me? See, I have these nightmares where Lord Voldemort´s younger self proclaims his eternal love for me and that really freakens me out.´

No, not an option.

If only the school were not so full of reminders of Tom Riddle, he thought miserably. But everywhere he went, he found some sign of his presence; the medals in the trophy room, Mauling Myrtle's toilet, the snake on the Slytherin emblem...

His eyes suddenly widened. The snake, of course! 

In all the confusion and chaos of the evening at Professor McGregor, he had almost forgotten about the mysterious animal speaking to him before Snape had turned up. *A human who talksss like one of usss. It hasss been a long time sssince the last of your kind passssed here.*

The last of his kind...

His eyes narrowed.

Could it be...?

Aprubtly he stood up. It was not much of a chance, but since he did not have any other idea at the moment, it was definetely worth a try.

************************************************************************

It seemed that the snape had already been waiting for him for she smiled in smooth satisfaction as he appeared in the dungeons, carefully looking around if anyone would be able to see him speaking to a wall.

„I wasss looking forwards to meet you again, little sssnake", she greeted him in a soft hiss, her black eyes narrowing as they measured him from top to the feet. „It´sss boring down here with noone to talk to. Those of your kind were alwaysss rare and after my Sssalazar left me, I ssspent centuries alone, not understood by anyone." 

Harry tried to force a sympathetic smile on his face, still taken aback at the way the image could slip to live at her own will. „You must have been quite lonely, hm?" 

As the serpent sighed in resigned confirmation, Harry took a step nearer to her. After all there was no way she could spring from the wall to bite him. At least he hoped so. „How comes it that you can speak anyway?" he asked curiously. „None of the other emblems can, can´t they?"

This made the serpent laugh a rich deep laughter whose soft tickling sound send a shiver of pleasure down Harry´s spine. „Thanksss to my Ssssalazar", she explained, uncoiling herself lazily. „He gave me life ssso that I could talk to him. He sssaid that he needed sssome intelligent conversssation in order to compensssate the talking with the other foundersss. They alwaysss infuriated him beyond reason, essspecially that idiotic Gryffindor man."

Harry could not surpress a little grin. „Yeah, I´ve heard that they did not get along to well." 

A low hiss was his only answer, indicating clearly that this was probably the understatement of the century. The intelligent black eyes stared thoughtfully at him. „You are in Gryffindor, aren´t you, little sssnake?" she asked eventually.

„That´s right", the boy answered, trying to sound casually, although his heart began to pound faster. „What about that?"

The black eyes never stopped looking at him in the same pensive way that was in itself frighteningly intense as though they were trying to tell him something without saying the words aloud, as though they expected him to listen to sounds that couldn't be heard. "You would be better off here in Ssslytherin", the serpent finally replied with disarming sincerity. „You would have understood your own world, yourssself, and the darkness so much better."

The storm within Harry began rising to the surface. He would not listen to this *again*! „You are wrong!" he shot back, trying to suppress the memory of his dream. „I am a Gryffindor. I have nothing in common with Slytherin!" He shook his head vehemently, wanting his outrage to take over his feeble-mindedness, to cleanse him of the part of him that wanted to agree with the snake.

Yet she only looked at him with the same pensive expression like before, as if she knew something that he did not. As though their fates were sealed and this was but a part to play. "You were not meant for Gryffindor", she insisted calmly, her voice never straying from soft persuasion. „You are just like my Tom."

Harry´s head snapped up which caused the snake to smile wistfully.

„Ah, I sssee, you know him." Letting her silvery coils slithering over each other and gradually untangling themselves, the serpent's deep black eyes seemed to soften dreamily. „My sssweet Tom", she said tenderly. „He would alwaysss come to visit me after he found out my sssecret. He would tell me everthing, his hopes, his dreamsss, his ambition. He would alwaysss confide in me, my darling boy, always trust me with his sssecrets for he knew that I would keep them forever for him."

Harry found it difficult to breathe suddenly. The darkness he knew so very well from his dreams suddenly was before him once again, slowly creeping in at the sides of his view, making the world around lose focus.

*You are addicted to the dark.*

„And you remind me ssstrongly of him", he heard the serpent's whisper like from a great distance. „You both were wounded by foolsss who did not sssee your strength, your vision, your glory. They tried to shut you down, to kill the magic in you, to make you common like they were. But like him you will find your way in the dark like we sssnakes always do in the end."

„I am not like Voldemort!" When the boy finally found his voice back, it was dry. Stepping back, he nearly collided with the wand behind him, barely noticing it, though. „I am not like him, do you hear me! I am nothing like him!"

And then the darkness swept over him.

************************************************************************

Snape swept through the empty corridors down to his dungeon, his long black robe billowing behind him and his facial expression even darker than usual, determined to take points from whomever would cross his way back to the peace of his dungeons; even if it was a Slytherin!

He hated these foolish staff meetings. He really did not understand why he still attended them anyway for they never made any sense whatsoever. Sybill, thrice-damned old bat that she was, would foretell him once more a most painful death, a prediction he had grown tired of already in his very first Divination lesson, Minerva would try to shut her up only to hold him a moral speech about favouring his own students in exchange (a thing he never did; it was not his fault that all the other Houses lacked brain as much as talent), meanwhile the others would quarrel over the Weasley twins´ newest crimes, while Albus would try to feed them with his ridiculous Muggle sweets. The only thing that ever stopped Severus from exploding at these occasion was counting the days until the next holidays, the days until the ignorant children were to leave this school, so that he wouldn't have to think about stealing points from these brain-scattered excuses of students or need to clean up broken beakers and burnt cauldrons. 

Oh yes, he hated staff meetings. But ever since Morrigan attended them too, they had taken a frightening turn towards death throes for him. 

Morrigan.

It had been a shock to him when Albus had announced the name of the new Defence Against the Dark Arts Teacher on the last meeting before the summer holidays. Morrigan of all people. Snape hadn't seen her since they had broken with each other after a tearful fight only days before Voldemort´s fateful attack on Godric´s Hollow, and the thought of meeting her again had been pure panic. As much as she meant to him, for Snape the thought of Morrigan McGregor would always be inextricably linked with pain and suffering and he strongly suspected that she felt the same about him. They just knew the other one too well to be completely comfortable with each other. 

In spite of this she had smiled at him when they had finally met each other at the bus station of Hogsmeade; had smiled the sweet, enchanting, promising smile he so well remembered, and naturally enough it had awoken the familiar constriction, the old mixture of affection and bitterness she always arose in him with a crush so painful that it could have screamed his lungs out. He had already been dreading what there was to come in this very first moment of their reunion. After all he knew best what her innocent facade hid so skilfully.

Severus smiled wistfully as he recalled how Morrigan had let herself go two weeks ago in front of Lily's son. So many masks that had been falling down from her deceitfully sweet face, so many camouflages. But then it was the way that world perceived her. The people around wanted to see the enchanting girl brimming with life and joy they remembered, not the hardened woman she had become and, being the good Slytherin that she was, Morrigan smiled and laughed like she always did, hiding her dark heart behind grace and heart-wrenching innocence.

Not that he was much better, he acknowledged sarcastically. Knowing that his presence at Hogwarts was seen as unsettling and foreboding by a large amount of people who knew about his past, he gave them what they expected, a dark and bitter man, killer, liar and minion of evil in a world that had already seen far too much. But then this mask was more truthful than the Morrigan was wearing.

Forcing the thoughts away, he speeded up, longing to get into the familiar loneliness of his dungeons, when a sudden hissing made him stop dead in his tracks.

It almost sounded like...

With the silent skill of a former spy, Snape stealthily moved as near as he could to the source of the sound without alerting it to his presence. He crouched behind a statue of a famous witch (Morgana if he was not mistaken) and slowed his breathing as he finally glanced around the corner.

He almost snorted out loudly.

Potter. The bane of his existence. He should have known. 

He already wanted to leave his hiding-place and take about twenty points from the boy for the mere benefit of cheering himself up, when something in the corner of his eye suddenly moved. His eyes widened in astonishment. The snake on the emblem was uncoiling herself. Twinkling. Talking to Potter in Snake Language.

His lips thinned. Another one of Salazar's infamous little surprises? It certainly would not astonish him for, in contrast to the other Houses, Slytherin was still full of unsolved riddles and unknown mystery whose origin went back to its founder. And it would be just the sort of thing that would happen to Potter to find one of those!

But the sarcastic witticism that laid already on the top of his tongue died when he saw the expression on the boy's face.

Paler than Snape had ever seen him before, Potter stepped back, nearly colliding against the wall behind him. Although he could not understand the indecipherable words and syllables flowing from the boy's mouth, there was no mistaking the look on his face, the dreadful mixture of despair and horror. He had seen this expression before, on persons that were soon to be confronted with Voldemort, on Muggle-borns who had fallen into the Deatheater´s hands, on Lily's face when he had told her that he did not love her.

Without thinking he rushed towards the boy and gripped his shoulder. „Potter!"

No reaction but the trembles running through the fragile body in his hands.

„Potter?" Severus asked again, this time a bit louder. „Potter?!"

The wide green eyes were open but they seemed to look straight through him, focussing on some unnameable horror of whose origin they alone knew. 

"Harry?" He hated himself for the worry in his voice. It was simply beyond reason what the insufferable boy could cause in him. But then the brat was still trembling badly, now suddenly clinging to his robes as if desperate for contact and Snape simply could not leave him alone like that, so fragile, so vulnerable, so much like Lily. Cursing inwardly, Snape wrapped one arm around the boy's shoulders and placed the other on the back of his head as he pulled him close to his side to keep him from collapsing. „Harry?" he asked a second time, trying to keep his voice as gentle as possible for him.

A bit of life returns to the glazed green eyes and finally the boy blinked very slowly as though the action were painful. „Professor?"

***********************************************************************


	8. Born of nightmares and dreams

Chapter 8: Born of nightmares and dreams  
The darkness was overwhelming and he was lost in it, lost in the frightening silence that was only interrupted by the distant echoes of memories dancing in the shadows, both born of nightmares and of dreams, and somehow he knew that even those quiet reminders of the life that laid behind him would cease in time; they would leave him completely alone and a part of him was sadly relieved at this knowledge. Was life worth its troubles? He did not know. This pain, it was not particularly unusual, this suffering nothing special. He really did not know whether it was worth this...  
  
But then there came another voice, stronger than the distant whispers, its call more urgent: "Harry! Harry! Dammit wake up, foolish boy!"  
  
Harry?  
  
Again and again the name was uttered, driving into his subconscious.   
  
Harry. He was Harry, wasn't he?  
  
"Harry!"  
  
All of a sudden the dark seemed less menacing than it had just moments earlier. Yes, he was Harry. The doubts and misgivings inside him begun to ebb, leaving him with a certainty he had not known since the earliest days of his childhood. Perhaps it was because of the voice that called out to him, that created him a way back to the light, but he was no longer afraid. No, he wouldn't let Voldemort haunt him forever. He had to be strong, because he was himself, Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived, son of James, son of Lily, a Gryffindor and not to be beaten by mere dreams.  
  
With all his mental strength he concentrated on the real world around him and to his astonishment he found himself partially in Snape's arms, being held up by the older man. His first thought was surprise at the fact how warm the body pressed against his was; he had always assumed that touching Snape would be just like looking in his eyes, cold and hard. Then another, far more shocking fact stroke him: What the hell was he doing in Snape's embrace?! "Professor?" he asked stunned.  
  
A flicker of relief appeared in the dark eyes, but before Harry could say anything, the Potions Master had already disengaged himself roughly from him, the usual sneer around his thin lips again. "So you've finally decided to regain your senses, Potter?" he snarled unfriendly. "I must say that you are developing a fatal tendency to tragedy lately and considering all your other personality flaws, I don't consider this too wisely."  
  
Regain his senses? Harry frowned at these words. But had he passed out?  
  
Flickering his eyes to the snake on the emblem, now dull and lifeless again, he finally understood what must have been happened. The damn thing had somehow managed to freaken him out so much that he had lost himself in the memory of his dream and Snape must have found him here in the dungeons, completely lost in his nightmare world and not knowing who or where he was.  
  
Dammit.  
  
The Potions Master had followed his gaze, his expression grim. "Always full of surprises, Slytherin House", he muttered quietly to himself before he turned his attention back to Harry, his black eyes piercing. "Will you kindly inform me of what had happened here, Potter?"  
  
Harry opened his mouth, then closed it again. Staring at the glaring professor, he wondered how he could tell Snape about this all. Just to say the words out loud would mean to betray himself.   
  
"Potter, I asked you a question! What happened?"  
  
Although not having much hope that Snape would fall for this, Harry flashed him his most innocent smile. "Oh nothing, Professor, nothing happened, I was just daydreaming..."  
  
Perhaps he had learned more at Professor Trelawney´s lessons than he had thought, but he actually could have predicted the annoyed sneer that followed this lie. "Ten points from Gryffindor for blatantly lying to a teacher!" the Potions Master snapped, his black eyes glittering angrily. "And if you'd rather talk to Madam Pomfrey or Professor McGonagall, Potter, I can very well arrange it for you."  
  
Feeling terrified of the mere thought of having to deal either with the mediwitch´s attempts to feed him with ill-smelling medicine or with his stern Head of House, Harry lowered his gaze to the floor. "No, I...well..."  
  
Staring at him with an unreadable expression, the older man finally sighed with a great air of exasperation. "Follow me", he ordered shortly and opened the secret entrance to Slytherin by quietly murmuring the password.   
  
Too weak to protest, Harry stumbled after him, thankfully that Snape walked at quite a leisurely pace that allowed him to keep up.   
  
He had never been to Snape's private rooms before, but he knew from rumours that they were located in the Slytherin dungeons, although not too far away from the Great Hall. Nevertheless the way through the dark, labyrinthine corridor seemed endless -probably due to the well-known Slytherin paranoia of having to deal with the unwelcome company of other Houses, the boy thought sarcastically.  
  
Snape finally stopped before an impressive looking stone door, unlocked it with a flick of his wand and waved the boy behind him impatiently inside. In spite of his dizziness, Harry could not suppress an air of curiosity of how Snape's private quarters would look like. Judging from his office, he expected a weird lab full of lots of sickly green pickled things floating in jars all around, but to his surprise the room looked quite normal - apart from the fact that Snape must have robed half of the library for the thousand books that stood neatly in his wooden shelves. In fact, it would be rather comfortable if it were a bit less immaculate... but then somebody who could spent hours complaining about inaccurately pounded scarab beetles just had to be a compulsive neat freak!  
  
But he had not much time to grin at this last thought for Snape indicated him to sit down on one of two impressive armchair in front of the fire place.   
  
As he followed this unspoken order hesitantly, he could feel Snape piercing gaze laying on him. "Once more, Potter, what happened?"  
  
Harry glanced at the floor. "A headache?" he offered shyly.  
  
Snape snorted derisively, then started to rummage through a shelf and dug out a vial of potion which he threw over to the boy so sharply that he just managed to caught it thanks to countless Quidditch trainings.   
  
"Drink." His mouth twisted at Harry's suspicious look. "It's an animating potion for the 'headache' you're suffering. And another ten points from Gryffindor for suspecting a teacher."  
  
Defeated, Harry swallowed the potion in a long, forced gulp. It had a bitter aftertaste, but he had to acknowledge that it made him feel better. However this feeling quickly vanished when Snape repeated his question for the third time, "What happened?"  
  
"It's..." The boy stumbled over his own words and shook his head. How could he explain this to anyone? "I'm sorry, sir, I... I can't talk about it."  
  
"You can't or you don't want to?"   
  
The Professor's voice remained completely bland, and Harry very carefully modulated his to echo the tone. "Both."  
  
Snape's lips thinned. "Even someone as dumbwitted as you, Potter, must understand that I cannot accept this as an answer when I find one of my students in such a state."  
  
Harry had already a scathing retort about men that cared more about blasted cauldrons than about any non-Slytherin students on his tongue, but suddenly decided that it wouldn't be wise to enrage Snape in this particular situation. All the Potions Master had to do was going straight to Dumbledore and Harry would not even think about the endless arguments that would bring about. "It was never before like that", he began with tentative honesty, his gaze on the little vial in his hands. It glittered mesmerizingly in the firelight, its light clear and cold, but warmer than Snape's eyes and much easier to look at. "Not that bad, anyway."  
  
"Fortunate." The black-haired man set down on the other armchair, his dark eyes laying on the boy with frightening intensity. "But what if this ominous ´it´ will be that bad the next time, too? Or worse? You surely don't expect me to waste my precious time with running after you in order to catch you every single time you lose conscience?"  
  
Don't expect and don't want to, Harry affirmed inwardly. "I guess it was the snake", he murmured quietly. "She told me that Salazar Slytherin himself had given her life. She said...well, I guess I just lost my nerves."  
  
Snape seemed to be processing this.. "Since when do you know about her abilities?"  
  
"Oh, since the night when...you know when Professor McGregor..."  
  
"Choose your visit for one of her silly hysteric breakdowns?" Snape continued nastily. When the boy nodded shyly, his lips thinned even more. "You should have told anybody, boy, do you notice that?"  
  
Harry lowered his head. "I forgot about it", he admitted ashamed.  
  
"You FORGOT?" Snape stared at him incredulously as though he thought his most loathed student had gone completely sick of hammers by now and Harry couldn't help but think that the look on his face would be worth to be captured for eternity by Colin's camera. "You find an enchanted emblem and you simply forget about it?"  
  
The boy felt an embarrassing heat on his cheeks. "It's not like nothing else in this school is enchanted!" he shot back defiantly. "I mean, every single bloody portrait can speak, too! What's so special about an enchanted emblem?"  
  
The Potions Master sneered derisively, but did, to Harry's enormous surprise, not comment on this. "What did the thing tell you?" he demanded instead.  
  
Harry sighed defeated. There was nothing he could do about it now; the older man wouldn't release him until he had forced the truth out of him. That was the great thing about good old Snape, he always had to push and push until he got exactly what he wanted. Why couldn't he had run into Flitwick or Sinistra... anybody but the Evil-Potions-Master-from-hell?  
  
"Well?" Snape prompted.  
  
"She spoke about Voldemort", Harry finally began rather reluctantly. "Said that he would always come to speak to her when he was still here at Hogwarts and that the two of them have gotten friends."  
  
"And this revelation made you completely loose your senses so that you did not notice what was going on around you anymore?" the older man shot back, his voice heavy with sarcasm. "Well, if this is what passes as Gryffindor bravery nowadays, it shouldn't be too great a feat to take the House in competition this year."  
  
Harry almost glared. "I am not afraid of telling you, if this is what you think!"  
  
Snape snorted contemptuously. "Well, forgive me, Potter, but I fail to believe this for I don't see a decent reason why a snake speaking about Voldemort should affect you this much."  
  
"Well, that might be because *you* don't have to deal with freaking dreams about Tom every bloody night!" Harry exploded and cursed himself in the same moment as Snape's eyebrows rose at both his outburst and the oddly intimate naming.   
  
"Dreams?" Snape asked in anticipation. "About...Voldemort´s younger self?"  
  
"Yeah", Harry returned through tightly clenched teeth. God, he was so stupid! He was so godforsaken stupid.  
  
Sneaking a quick peek at the older man, he saw a contemplative look on his face as if he were considering things. "What are these dreams about?"   
  
Leave it alone, Harry thought tiredly. Snape would not let him go before he had told him anyway. "We are standing together on a graveyard and he lays down blood-red roses on a grave. I don't know who's buried there, either his or my parents, I never asked. It didn't seem to make any difference in this place. He... he looks very much like myself and he talks to me as if we were... brothers."  
  
"What does he talk about?"  
  
Harry closed his eyes for a moment. "Him and me. About the ´strikening similarities´ between us." Even to himself his voice sounded bitter. "He says that I belong to him and to the darkness and that all my attempts to prove otherwise will be futile in the end."   
  
He lowered his head. There, he had said it. Had told all, as he had thought he never would. Now all he had to worry about was the man he had confided in. Trust was something he had not much of, thanks to his upbringing with the Dursleys, and he never thought that any of it would be invested in Snape. But strangely enough his git of a Potions Master might be the only one in this castle who could understand him.   
  
"Do you agree?"  
  
Harry opened his eyes again in surprise. "What?"  
  
The black eyes were staring at him with frightening intensity. "Do you agree with Voldemort? Do you feel tempted by the dark?"   
  
Damn, was the professor a mind-reader on top of being a sardonic git?!   
  
"A part of me", he heard himself admitting in a voice barely louder than a whisper. "I know that it sounds creepy but I was never afraid of the darkness. It's comforting to me. Somehow I feel at home in it."  
  
"That's nothing to be ashamed of." Snape's tone sounded less biting than usual, almost gentle. He seemed to struggle shortly with himself, before he finally met his eyes again, his expression a painful mixture of sadness and determination. "You know, you're mother once said exactly the same thing to me."  
  
Harry's head jerked. Unbelieving he stared into the familiar black eyes, that suddenly seemed less cold, less hostile. "My mum... liked the dark?"  
  
"One could definitely say so." In spite of his strangely strained voice, a little nostalgic smile graced Snape's thin lips for a moment. "She used to sneak out of the Gryffindor Tower every night to climp up to the top of the Astronomy Tower when we were still at school. It was her favourite place in the world. She could sit endlessly there, staring up to the night sky as if the world around was not real to her, as if she was searching for one perfect setting that she alone could find."  
  
He broke up as if he could not endure the memory any moment longer. For one moment Harry and him just stared at each other, a strange, unnamed energy tackling between them, before the Harry chose to break the silence. "I didn´t mean this sort of darkness", he said hesitantly.  
  
"Neither did I." Snape's eyes were full to bursting with unspoken emotions. "Listen, boy, Voldemort may have left a part of him in you the night he failed to perform the killing curse, but this does not necessarily make you evil. Tom Riddle was innocent once, but chose to follow a bloodstained way full of hatred, vengeance and remorse. You can do otherwise." He paused shortly. "Like your mother did."  
  
"Professor Dumbledore said the same thing to me", the boy acknowledged quietly after a while, returning the dark gaze without wincing. "And Professor McGregor talks on similar lines, too."  
  
A resentful expression appeared on Snape's angular features. "Is that so?" he repeated, his fingers beginning to play in an imaginary rhythm on his chair. He paused for a moment as though not sure how to continue. When he turned his black eyes back to Harry's green ones, a message laid in them, as if he were trying to tell him something without saying the words aloud. "Well, perhaps you should know that your Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher merely copies your mother when she speaks along those lines", he eventually told him with a wrinkled nose. "Lily was the one who believed in freedom without boundaries, she was the one who was convinced that everybody could and should go his own way, regardless of the difficulties. Morrigan on the other hand..."   
  
"What about her, Professor?" the boy prompted when Snape did not speak further, but before he could get an answer, a loud knocking on the door suddenly interrupted him. "Professor Snape?" a young female voice asked. "It's me, Glory. Can I have a word with you?"  
  
Regaining his usual cool composure again, Snape threw a quick glance at Harry, before his jaw set firm. "Come in, Miss Caulfield."  
  
The next moment a slender girl about Harry's age with a wild mane of curly raven-black hair swept in. "Good evening, sir, I...", she stopped dead in her tracks when she saw Harry, her violet-blue eyes opening wide in astonishment. "I can come back later if I disturb you..."  
  
Snape waved impatiently "Not at all. Mr Potter and me were just debating on what to do about his abysmal grades, although I fear that even personal assignment, as much as he would surely love that, won't help in this hopeless case."   
  
A little grin appeared on the girl's astonishing pretty features, but she did not comment on this. Looking closer at her, Harry was rather surprised that he never noticed this Glory Caulfield before -for she was stunningly gorgeous!- but then he always tried his best to ignore the Serpents, so perhaps it wasn´t that surprising.   
  
"So what is on your mind, Miss Caulfield?" The Professor eventually asked, his tone not unfriendly. "Knowing your cunning self quite well, I grant that there's a purpose to your visit, or have you simply come to for the pleasure of the company?"  
  
"Considering the fact that the majority of this godforsaken school tends to be boring to no end, the latter might as well be possible", the girl shot back wittily, before batting her eyes in a parody of coquettishness. "And I daresay that most people would describe me as charming rather than cunning."  
  
Snape arched an eyebrow at this. "As you said moments before, Miss Caulfield, most people at this school tend to be morons", he returned dryly although Harry could have sworn to see amusement glittering in the black depths of his eyes.  
  
The girl choose to overhear Snape's last sentence. "Anyway, Lilah´s got birthday and we wanted to ask if we could use the common room for a little party tonight", she explained beaming brightly, while at the same time peering closely at her Head of House. "Please, Professor!"  
  
Settling back in his armchair, Snape's lips curled as he thought this over. "Why don't you try to sneak out of your dorms in the middle of the night and celebrate in a deserted classroom like you usually do when someone of your lot sees fit to a social gathering?"  
  
Glory wrinkled her nose. "Because this always results in you finding us and giving out some gruesome detentions and somehow deja vu just isn't what it used to be", she answered, sounding genuinely annoyed at the memory. Then she flashed him another breathtaking sweet smile. "So are we allowed to use the common room? Come on, Professor, paaaaleeeeez!"  
  
A small smirk appeared on Snape's angular features. "I trust you to behave appropriately", he finally gave his consent. "Do not destroy, burn, disintegrate, transmutate or cause any damage in any way to the common room. The same rules apply to each other. And the rest of the school."   
  
Glory grinned in response. "What about things belonging to Gryffindor or Professor Trelawney?" she asked mischievously.  
  
Harry nearly choked as he saw the grin on Snape's face. He grinned! No smirk, no sneer, but a boyish little smile that made him look about ten years younger. "There you may have free reign."   
  
"You're the best, Professor!" the girl exclaimed heartfully. With that she stepped back to the door. Her beautiful blue eyes glanced back at Harry for a second, before she finally left the room again.  
  
"Merlin help us all", Snape murmured amused, though more to himself than to Harry. Then his eyes fell back on the boy and narrowed dangerously. "Potter, will you tell me what makes you stare at me like an idiot?"  
  
Harry nearly jumped. "Well I...", he began, but hesitated as he thought his answer over. He couldn't really tell Snape that he had never considered the Slytherins to be normal people with normal feelings that even threw birthday parties for each other. Nor that he hadn't thought Snape to be such a human Head of House that was even capable of humour. "Nothing", he finally answered unconvincingly.  
  
Snape snorted. "`Nothing´ seems to be something that occupies your mind far often." He paused shortly. "But then I have known this before."   
  
Harry grinned weakly in response. "I wouldn't want to destroy your bad opinion of me."  
  
"I guess it's already too late for that." The return was so quiet that Harry nearly did not understand him. But before the boy had the slightest chance to say something, Snape had already stood up and began to rummage in his shelves again. "Luckily for you, I use to have always some Dreamless Potions here for myself, Potter", the Potions Master explained in a very strained voice that clearly forbid the boy to comment on his last statement in any way. "You will have to take three drops every evening before you go to bed."   
  
"Okay", Harry finally managed to return, staring blankly at the older man's back.  
  
Snape always had Dreamless Potions for himself? Did that mean that the Potions Master suffered of nightmares, too? That he too had to fight with the vague terrors of memories and self-woven horrors? Well, if he thought about it, Snape had definitely seen enough evil to be haunted by it.   
  
He was so deep in his thoughts that he nearly jumped when the Potions Master suddenly addressed him. "Considering your talents with snakes, I am somehow surprised that the Sorting Head did not put you in Slytherin."   
  
Harry shrugged, uncertainty playing over his features at this sudden change of the conversation. "Well, it wanted to", he admitted slowly, remembering what the head had told him on that evening that seemed ages ago. "It said that being in Slytherin would help me to greatness, but I asked it to put me somewhere else."   
  
He heard a distant snort from behind the shelves. "I suppose that my house was not good enough for a celebrity like you?"  
  
"No, it wasn't that", Harry answered hurriedly.  
  
"What was it then?"  
  
The boy hesitated shortly. "I guess I simply did not want to be in the same House the murderer of my parents was", he eventually answered after a long time of silence.  
  
Snape appeared back behind the shelves, a little crystal bottle in his hands, his expression beyond anything the boy could read. "Do you sometimes think you made the wrong choice?"  
  
"Never", Harry answered without hesitation. "I am happy in Gryffindor. Okay, sometimes I feel as if me and the others existed on two completely different levels that stops us from communicating properly, but would never give up what Gryffindor gave to me. Perhaps Slytherin would not have been too bad either, but I'll never regret my decision."  
  
So much for not making him angry. Except, Harry realised, Snape wasn't angry. In fact, he was almost smiling, not a happy smile admittedly, but he definitely wasn't angry. "You take after your father so much and yet sometimes you sound just like Lily", he said, his voice thoughtfully. Then he threw him the bottle. "Come back to me when you finished this one. I grant you stay over Christmas like always?"  
  
The boy nodded. For a moment they stared at each other again, many things between them still unspoken. This time it was Harry who looked away first. "Well, I think I should go now", he suggested hesitantly.  
  
"I certainly won't hinder you from that."   
  
"Professor?"  
  
An exasperated sigh. "What else, Potter?"  
  
"Thank you."  
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	9. Womanhood and the problem of decent conv...

~ enahma:   
yeah, this IS leading to somewhere. Actually, the last chapter is already half-written. Nobody would guess so if he met me, but I'm this one of these fanatics who always makes herself time schedules and to-do-lists (I'm far too chaotic to get through my life without these little aids ^^). That's why I tend to write down the plot of every story before I begin to tip it at my PC.  
However, there are some hints in the story that could get you an idea about its ending, but I try not to be too obvious (it would be rather dull if anybody could already anticipate the end of the story, wouldn't it ^^). But I have to admit that I sometimes leave my course. Take Glory for example. She was just introduced into the story to show Harry that Snape is not just the Greasy-Git-out-of-Hell he knows from his Potions lessons, but a rather understanding, sometimes even humorous Head of House, but somehow I grew so fond of her that I decided to give her more space in the story. Well, you'll see...  
  
~ and like always my thanks to all my other reviewers!  
  
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Chapter 9: Womanhood and the problem of decent conversation   
"And you will really be alright, Harry?"  
  
"For the one hundredths time this morning, yes I will." Harry rolled his eyes at his bushy-haired friend as he reached out for another bowl of porridge. "For heaven's sake, Hermione, how old do you think I am? I certainly won't die out of loneliness just because I have to stay alone for Christmas this year!"  
  
In spite of this vehement answer, Hermione didn't seem to be quite convinced. "I just want to know if you are sure", she insisted, biting her bottom lip. "I mean really really sure."  
  
Refusing to repeat himself another time, Harry began to eat his breakfast. He did not know what had gotten into Hermione and Ron lately, but ever since they had told him of their plan to spend the holidays with their families, they both acted like absolute weirdoes around him. If he didn't knew better, he would suspect them to feel guilty about leaving him out of something important, some big secret he wasn't supposed to know about yet.  
  
A sarcastic smirk appeared on his lips. Great, he was already becoming as paranoid as the Slytherins. All he had to do now was to find himself a comfortable little chamber in the dungeons where he could dwell on important matters like the purity of blood and the pleasure of money, and Lucius Malfoy would probably adopt him right on the spot.  
  
"Is something wrong, Harry?"  
  
The boy's head jerked. "Err...no", he returned, forcing an innocent smile on his face. "I was just wondering where Ron is. It's not like him to miss breakfast."  
  
Forgetting her worry about him in an instant, Hermione snorted angrily. "He's packing his suitcase!" she snapped. "Can you believe this? The train will leave in exactly two hours and Ron Weasley hasn't even began to pack his suitcase! I simply don't believe the boy sometimes! He knew for WEEKS that we would leave today, he head plenty of time to arrange his things, but NO, Mister Weasley leaves it all for the last minute. Like always! How is the supposed to pass the O.W.L.s at the end of this year? Personally, I am of the opinion that..."  
  
Harry lowered his head so that his friend would not see his grin. Ron and Hermione had been quarrelling since the first moment they had laid their eyes on each other, but ever since the beginning of this year, their little fights had taken a rather amusing turn towards marriage throes. As far as he knew, there were already several bets on the question how much time they would still need to get over their shyness and to admit their feelings to each other...  
  
"Do you listen to me, Harry?"  
  
Widening his innocent smile, Harry looked up again. "Of course I do. You were just speaking about...the importance our grades have for our future lives?" he guessed.  
  
"Correct", Hermione acknowledged, still sounding slightly irritated. Then she shot him his bossiest glance. "And like I said, I really advice you to use the opportunity to spent as much time in the library as you can when we're not here. You won't find it this empty so soon again."  
  
Rolling his eyes inwardly, Harry tried to look as though he found the idea of non-stop learning over the Christmas Holidays really appealing. But then he actually did not fancy the thought of spending his entire time with the few First Years that would stay together with him in Gryffindor. "By the way, Hermione, do you know anyone except from me that stays as well?" he eventually asked around a mouthful of porridge. "I mean from the other Houses?"  
  
As his bushy haired bit her bottom lip, Harry could almost see the wheels in her ingenious head working on overtime. "Well, certainly some of the Ravenclaws, they always like to have the library for themselves", she finally answered hesitantly. "And this blonde Hufflepuff girl Seamus was dating last year, if I'm not mistaken."  
  
Harry hesitated shortly. "What about the Slytherins?" he finally asked reluctantly.  
  
Hormone's gaze shot up. "What do you care about those?" she asked incredulously, a hint of contempt in her voice that made Harry angry beyond belief although he couldn't explain the feeling himself. "I was just curious", he returned shortly, taking a deep sip of his pumpkin juice.  
  
It was strange, but somehow the last night had changed the hostile feelings he had held against Snape's House from the first day he had ever stepped into this school. If he thought about it now, he had to acknowledge that he knew next to nothing about the Slytherins. Being able to name almost all Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs above third year and to give a basic outline of the personality of each of them, he couldn't even put faces to most Slytherins of his own class apart from Malfoy and his little gang. And judging from the pretty girl with the biting wit he had met last night in Snape's rooms, he actually seemed to miss something.  
  
For one moment he was tempted to tell Hermione about the previous evening. About the fact that his most loathed teacher, for whom he had always been Potter, a name spat with venomous hatred, had actually called him Harry, about Glory Caulfield, birthday parties in the dungeons and about the really frightening fact that the thought of having been meant to be one of the Serpents suddenly didn't held the old horror anymore. Merlin knew, if he had ever been in need for Hormone's calm reasoning mind it was now, but then he could hardly spoil her last breakfast at Hogwarts with shocking her to death.  
  
Noticing that his friend's smart brown eyes still dissected him like a small animal on a lab table, he flashed her his most charming smile and to his surprise it actually worked for the girl relaxed and returned her attention to her breakfast.  
  
Relieved, Harry tried to do likewise, but against his will his eyes wandered to the teacher's table just about ten seconds later to focus on Snape who was like so often sitting next to Professor McGregor and judging from his facial expression willing to kill anybody who approached him. It was the same expression he usually wore, but Harry couldn't help but think about how different he looked when he smiled.  
  
*You take after your father so much and yet sometimes you sound just like Lily*  
  
Strange as it was, he could actually begin to understand what his mother had seen in his Potions Master so many years ago. Of course, the man had always acted like a sardonic bastard towards him, but if he wanted to be honest, he himself had not been very obliging either; he did not even give him his thanks when he had discovered that Snape had saved his life in his first year. Instead he had chosen the easy route, had chosen to hate the Potions Master without asking twice about his motives.  
  
Again he eyed him surreptiously, the thin features of his face, the irritating cold ebony of his eyes, the hard line of his mouth and suddenly he had to admit a feeling of relief at the fact that someone knew about his dreams, that someone understood. Of course he wouldn't have chosen Snape to confide in in the first place if he had had option, but now he thought that things could have turned out worse.   
  
In this moment Professor McGregor noticed his gaze and winked at him, a bright smile on her angelic face, and despite of himself Harry found himself grinning back. He did not know what it was, but there was no way any decent human being could be gloomy when Morrigan McGregor smiled at him. If one wasn't Snape anyway.  
  
Harry frowned as he observed the murderous glare Snape shot at his neighbour when she suddenly addressed him. The two of them seemed to exchange some sharp words with each other before Professor McGregor suddenly stood up and left the room with her usual grace, leaving Snape alone at the teachers´ table. For one moment Harry's and Snape's eyes met, some unspoken strong emotion tackling between them, before the older man returned his attention to his breakfast.  
  
Strange, the boy thought absent-mindedly. Really strange...  
  
********************************************************************************  
  
Twisting his fork artfully into his food, Snape listened to the silver metal scratching against the plate in a way most people would call irritating, his sour expression clearly suggesting that he would not think twice about using the fork against anyone stupid enough to speak to him, too. It grew ever harder for him to resist his desire to stare at the space where he knew the insolent Potter boy sat. Not only that he was still trying to process the fact that the Sorting Hat had recommended Lily's son to stay in his own House, he also had to acknowledge that everything he had assumed about the boy was entirely wrong. He had always considered Harry to be the exact copy of his disgusting father, the epitome of everything Gryffindor behold, chivalry, courage, and a lack of common sense the majority of the time, but the last night had proved him wrong. The boy was but the living replica of Lily with all her fears, all her doubts, all her strength and all her strong believes. And like her he had no idea about the enchanting charm of his brilliant emerald green eyes.   
  
It was unnerving. Frightening even.  
  
He nearly jumped when the woman at his side suddenly addressed him with that sort of casual voice he had begun to fear from her. "The boy stares at you."  
  
Snape tried not to froze too visible at these words. "Can you possible try to be more precise, Morrigan? I guess there are several persons in this hall whom this description fits to", he told the golden woman beside him, shooting her a sardonic glare.  
  
A knowing little smirk appeared on Morrigan's adorable full lips. "Severus, Severus, whom do you think you can fool?" she sighed, her beautiful sapphire eyes seeing right through his facade to his bleeding black heart. A heart so much like her own.   
  
His lips thinned. She knew him far too well for his taste. "I don't think I understand what you are talking about", he retorted stiffly.  
  
Like always, she did not even think about withdrawing from his coldness, but watched him with an intensity that made him tear his eyes away, something usually nobody but Albus managed since Lily had left his life. They were always the first to turn, not him.  
  
"You're afraid of me." She finally said, breaking the silence momentarily. It was a bold statement, as if she knew the truth before he himself did. "Why? Aren't we friends?"  
  
He turned away from her, refusing to look at her for he well knew the look he would see on her beautiful face. He could appreciate an effective scheme even if he did not necessarily approve of the consequences, but there was no way he could bring himself to face the unnerving sweet facade of a woman who was everything but innocent, a woman who had been his biblical Serpent and Temptress, damning him once and once again. But then like Mankind in general, he added with bitter sarcasm, he had never really *needed* the Serpent to fall.   
  
"We are friends", he finally answered. It was the truth after all. They had always been friends, even when they had hated each other, even when they had tried to overcome the loneliness they both felt in the few desperate and lust-filled embraces they had shared what seemed a lifetime ago. They had always been friends. This world was a fucked-up place, but he bloody well couldn't imagine it without her. "And I sincerely hope this won't change."   
  
"But you don't trust me?" There was no accusation in the question, only childlike curiosity.  
  
Eying her intently, Snape shook his head very slowly. "No, I don't."  
  
Her bright eyes began to sparkle with their usual cheerfulness, though this time it was truly genuine. "Sev, you're breaking my poor heart" she exclaimed flirtatiously, her eyes wide with innocence as she flashed him another bedazzling smile.   
  
"And I thought that it was already broken before", he shot back, regretting it the instant the words had left his mouth when he saw the expression on her face.  
  
"Morrigan I ...I didn't mean it."   
  
"Oh yes, you did." For one short moment the ever-present guards in her eyes stripped away, letting the emotions run through them, sapphire blue tinged with traces of remorse, fatigue and hatred. Then she regained their composure. "One of these days we'll have to talk, Sev." It had been years ago when he had heard this cold, indifferent matter-of-fact voice from her the last time and the memory, brushing like a breeze within him, awakened his worst fears. "And I mean a real talk, not the ridiculous niceties we have exchanged for the last three months. We know each other too good for this."   
  
"I agree", he returned softly, avoiding her eyes. But when he felt her standing up and leaving the Hall with her usual feline grace, he didn't look after her. Instead his eyes wandered to Potter who was now openly staring at him, looking as heart-wrenching innocent as always. But strangely, the sight did not infuriate him like usually, in the contrary.   
  
His lips thinned. No, he would not tell Morrigan about the secret Potter had confided in him. He would protect the brat like he had protected his mother before him. There were so many things the boy didn't need to know about; how sharp Morrigan's fingernails could be, how pale Lily was when he told her to leave him forever, what serving Voldemort really meant.  
  
Somebody really had to look after the boy.  
  
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2 days later:  
  
He couldn't believe it. He absolutely couldn't believe it but there he was, on the third day of his holidays, perusing the aisles of the library and trying to figure what he wanted to read over the next days. Harry snorted. It was pure irony, really, but it was still preferable to the Common Room with the three First Years that all stared at his forehead as though they expected his scar to turn pink every moment.   
  
Pulling a source on animagi, he turned sharply to go to the tables and before he could stop himself, he collided into a soft body behind him and suddenly found himself laying on the ground in a pile of books and parchment.   
  
A pair of sparkling violet-blue eyes flashed up to him. "Can't you watch where you're going, Potter?" None else but Glory Caulfield snapped angrily at him.   
  
Harry stared at the pretty Slytherin, whom he had observed every day at the meals for the last three days, momentarily, feeling himself blushing. It had been an oddly pleasing discovery for him that the girl was staying over Christmas, too, but however he hadn't exchanged one word with her yet. Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, he stood up. "Are you all right?"  
  
"Perfectly fine, I simply enjoy people colliding into me. What's it to you?"  
  
"I'm okay." Instinctively he extended his hand to help her up. For one moment she stared wide-eyed at him as though a gesture of kindness was the last thing she expected from him, then her lips thinned. Ignoring his offer of assistance, she climbed to her feet unaided and bend over in order to pick up the book she had been carrying with her. "Serve your Gryffindor chivalry for someone who'd appreciate it", she snarled. "I wouldn't have your glorious self to find yourself subject to such terribly base drivel as to talk to a bloody Slytherin that is just out to kill the world."  
  
Harry couldn't help himself, but he felt his cheeks heating at her hostile tone. Arrogant, snobbish, cold-blooded, stupid,...  
  
But against his will, he suddenly remembered Professor McGregor's words from her first DADA lesson: *Slytherins start out the same as everybody else who passes through this school. They are not chosen for malice, but for their ambition and their capability of greatness. Never forget this, it is not the house that makes the wizard or the witch, it's the choice one makes!*  
  
Frowning he stared at the pretty head of wild black curls. Perhaps this was the perfect chance to see if she was right, the perfect chance to understand why his own mother had sought the company for two Slytherins in her own Hogwarts days. And, a nasty little voice in his head added, it would show if all the thoughts he had lately invested in the girl had been worth the trouble.  
  
"What are you reading?" he eventually asked, trying to sound unobtrusively as possible.  
  
Glory squinted and stared hard at him, almost as if she were trying to discern   
something in his face. "A book, obviously", she finally replied reluctantly.  
  
As obvious as her desire to be left in peace. Harry knew that it would probably be wiser to take his leave now, before he could make a complete idiot of himself, but he simply didn't want to walk away though, not just yet. Not before he knew whether there was the slightest chance that he might get through to her.  
  
"What sort of book?" he prompted.  
  
"The sort with words in it."   
  
"I was just wondering if you were all right."   
  
Raising her chin, she speared him with a piercing cobalt blue glare. "What the hell are you playing at, Potter?" she asked icily. "Got a bet going with Weasley about how gullible the Slytherin bitches really are?'  
  
He felt like being slapped into the face, shock registering plainly on his face, before a rush of hot anger shot up inside him. How stupid had he been to think that he could actually talk normally to one of the Serpents? "Forget it!" he snapped back. "I must have been out of my mind to think that one could have a reasonably civil conversation with one of your lot!"   
  
Grabbing the book about Animagi he had already considered before, he sharply turned around to leave the library, when the girl's voice unexpectedly hold him back. "One hundred Counter curses and Protection Spells."  
  
Curiosity and an odd sting of hope let his anger vanish and made him turn around. "Huh?"  
  
Rolling her eyes, she pointed at the book in her arms, a reluctant pout reforming her crimson lips as though she was not sure whether her decision to speak to him was wisely. "You asked me what sort of book this is. It's a book about Defence Against the Dark Arts."  
  
Harry did not alter his indifferent demeanour in any way, knowing that this would probably make her leave on the spot, but he could not help but feeling a kind of weird excitement. Now he only had to find something to talk about and...yes, and what? "Are you interested in DADA?" he eventually asked, knowing how stupid he probably sounded.  
  
Glory shrugged, still a bit of hesitation in her expression. "I just read it to pass the time", she explained reserved. "The dungeons are rather dull with everybody gone. It's just me and two third years who are so dim-witted that I actually understand why their parents don't want them to have at home over Christmas."  
  
Laughing, Harry relaxed a bit. "It's the same in Gryffindor; just me and three First Years for whom I am but a wandering forehead."  
  
Breakthrough, at last; Harry could almost see the hostile barriers crashing   
down in the warmth of her smile. "So we are both reduced to spent our holidays with non-stop reading", she concluded, her tone much less hostile then before. Biting her lower lips, she glanced towards the book in his arms. "What book is this, by the way?"  
  
As Harry showed her the title of the book, her shook her head. "If you want to read something decent on Animagi you'd better turn to Marisa Carlisle!" she advised him. "This", she wrinkled her nose at the book in Harry's hands. "Isn't worth its paper."  
  
Harry smiled. "Thanks."  
  
Glory smiled back. "You're welcome."  
  
The awkward silence returned. Biting his lip, Harry resisted the urge to fiddle with the edge of his sleeve. This was getting ridiculous. He had finally attempted to reach on of the Slytherins - to reach *this* particular Slytherin! - and now they couldn't even talk to each other? Eventually he couldn't stand it any more.  
  
"Since we're the only persons our age staying in Hogwarts over the holidays, perhaps we could sometimes...I don't know play chess of something. Just to pass the time", he blurted out, a bit more breathlessly than he had intended.  
  
Now she actually grinned. "I'll have to double-check my schedule, but at   
present I don't see why not."  
  
For one moment Harry felt like floating in air. "Okay", he said, grinning like an idiot. "Fine."  
  
*We have 'Great ambition' and we are 'cunning', but nevertheless some of us can be trusted*  
  
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More Author's notes:  
  
So, what do you say? Do you like Glory? Even if you don't, I can't help it because she has completely charmed me so that I won't get rid of her too soon.  
  
About Hermione´s and Ron´s odd behaviour... I decided not to elaborate it since I'm sure that whatever you imagine is better than whatever I could make up! 


	10. Judas Iscariot and the Whore of Babylon

yiota ~ no need to fear, Glory won't play a big role in the course of the story  
  
Vivian Marie ~ yes, he is constantly growing to be more and more like his mother. Somehow this whole "Oh Harry resembles James SOOOO much" we're always getting in the books began to bore me ^^  
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Chapter 10: Judas Iscariot and the Whore of Babylon  
Whistling, Harry strolled through the empty corridors of the castle, his brilliant green eyes sparkling cheerfully. If one asked him, these Christmas Holidays were one of the best he had ever spent - and all thanks to a certain curly-haired Slytherin girl with the bitiest wit and the sweetest smile one could imagine.  
  
He blushed a bit when he thought of Glory. By now the two of them spent almost their entire time together; they played chess, went for endless walks around the lake or simply talked to each other and he couldn't help but feeling himself growing fonder of her with every passing day. True, there was no denying that she was your typical Slytherin, ambitious and cunning, but then she was also clever and extremely funny. Instinctively she understood him in a way even Ron and Hermione did not, and she could make him laugh even when he felt particularly gloomy with the world around him.   
  
Of course he knew that not everybody would understand this blossoming friendship between them - to understand this he just had to look at the faces in the Great Hall when the two of them sat together at the meals.  
  
A sardonic little smirk quirked at the corner of Harry's lips. The students for one thing obviously thought that Glory had coaxed his subconscious and therefore treated him with the same uncertainty they would have shown towards a lunatic, but the reactions of the teachers´ were even more particular. While most of them began to talk about ragging hormones whenever they turned their backs on him, Dumbledore would always twinkle delightedly when he saw the two of them together (a fact that irritated Harry to no end), Professor McGregor would smile her catlike smile as though she knew something he still failed to see and Snape...  
  
Well, the Potions Master wouldn't give him any hint about his feelings, although Harry could often catch him staring at him as though he wanted to tell him something, as though he expected the boy to understand some ominous message in his eyes only intended for him. But he would never speak to him in public, not even to take points from him, something he hadn't done in weeks by the way.  
  
Harry frowned when he thought about his former most-loathed teacher. By now he had come to the conclusion that the public Snape and the private one were two entire different personalities that acted completely separated from each other. Admittedly they both shared a tendency to biting sarcasm, but the Snape Harry met whenever he went to the dungeons to get himself a new Dreamless Potion (he had made peace with the snake on the emblem so that she would let him in without password) definitely wasn't the downright unfair bastard he knew from his lessons. Perhaps, the boy thought pensively, this was what he was like to his own house. Almost nice.  
  
A melodic female voice behind him suddenly made him jerk back into reality. "Harry? Oh Merlin, you're the Saviour of the Hour!"  
  
Surprised the boy turned around and caught sight of his DADA teacher who was right now carrying about ten books on her slender arms and obviously barely able to keep her balance. "Would you mind..."  
  
"Oh, of course not." Hastening to her side, Harry caught some of the books before they could fall to the floor. "Where do you want to bring them to?"  
  
Pushing a golden lock back behind her ears, the Professor gave him a thankful look. "To my rooms if you don't mind. Oh Harry, you are such a sweetheart!"  
  
Turning deeply red, the boy nodded hastily and began to head towards the blonde's chambers. A sweetheart?!  
  
Trying to disguise his embarrassment, he let his eyes wander over the titles and found himself rather astonished at the choice of titles. "Are all of them from the Restricted Area?" he asked flabbergasted.  
  
"Hm? Oh, yes, they are." She twinkled teasingly at him. "And don't even begin to give me lessons like your friend Miss Granger tends to, I'm wanting them for my personal lecture, not to corrupt my students."   
  
Harry had to grin at that. "Hermione always tends to overact", he explained cheerfully, remembering the S.P.E.W. campaign his bushy-haired friend had started last year. "It's her way of showing that she cares."  
  
The blonde wrinkled her pretty nose. "That may be as it is, but I swear, if I hear one more `But Professor McGregor according to A way to Self Defence for Underaged Wizards, you are not allowed to teach us these sorts of spells´, I will go mad!" Annoyed, she shook her head so that her golden locks flew elegantly through the air. "I don't get it. When I was of her age, I would have killed to learn some of the spells I'm teaching you now!"  
  
Remembering what Snape had told him about the blonde's history, Harry couldn't help but frowning almost imperceptively at these words. Well, if one wanted to be completely honest, she had almost killed someone in order to fed her obsession with the Dark Arts...  
  
Obviously he hadn't so much of a pokerface as he had always assumed for she suddenly eyed him suspiciously. "Do *you* think that I some of the stuff I teach you is too dark, Harry?"   
  
"Oh no!" The boy hastened to reassure her, shaking his head urgently. "Not at all! You're the best Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher we ever had."   
  
For one moment he felt slightly guilty towards Professor Lupin, but then he couldn't deny the fact that his father's old friend, although very had competent at the defence against Dark Creatures, had ignored most of the other areas. Professor McGregor on the other hand possessed an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of all sorts of dark arts that existed and didn't hesitate to answer all questions one could have concerning them. Although he was very sure that he shouldn't knew half the things he had learned about Forbidden Curses and Enchantments this year, he really felt that he had never had before such effective DADA lessons.  
  
A triumphant little smile quirked at the corner of the blonde's delicate rouge lips for one moment. "I try my best", she returned, trying to sound modestly and failing miserably, before suddenly bursting into girlish giggles, her expression open and mischievously like that of a young girl. "But I have to admit that Miss Granger isn't too wrong with her judgement", she acknowledged in a comparative whisper. "I actually would have difficulties to explain a headmaster less indulgent than Professor Dumbledore some of the things I teach you."  
  
"So why do you teach us this stuff?"   
  
She shrugged nonchalantly. "Nearly every spell can be used in order to cause damage to others", she returned carelessly. "And doesn't one of these old Muggle proverbs say that an attack is sometimes the best defence?"  
  
Harry had to laugh at this wilful naivety. "Somehow I doubt that the Ministry of Magic would accept this explanation."  
  
She giggled girlfully. "So we better thank the heavens for Professor Dumbledore´s never-ending understanding and don't mention to anybody that I taught you the Torquerus Curse."  
  
Before her rooms, she stopped in her tracks and murmured the password ("Madhatter´s tea party") before entering it. "Why don't you sit down for a moment, Harry", she invited him graciously as they had put down the books on her table. "You must be tired of carrying all these stuff." When he saw his hesitation, her smile widened. "No hysterical breakdown, cross my heart!"  
  
Laughing despite himself, Harry took seat on the sofa and let his eyes stroll around the beautiful decorated room. Obviously the Professor had been in real Christmas spirit lately for everything in the room, even the little Slytherin crest on the wall, was covered by shiny balls and glittering ribbons. "I really like it in here", he told her honestly.  
  
"I'm glad to hear this", she thanked him with her most beautiful smile. "You know, Severus was visiting me a few days ago when I had just finished the decorations and he nearly got an apoplectic fit. Told me something about being a ridiculous woman with a plebeian taste and that he would rather die than to rearrange his holy sanctuary for something as unnecessarily as Christmas."   
  
Harry grinned. "Sounds just like him", he returned, his voice gentler than he intended.  
  
Professor McGregor arched a perfectly plucked eyebrow. "Oh, you should have seen him when we were still students", she returned, chuckling a bit at the memory. "He always used to stay the winter holidays here in Hogwarts, you know, and every year he managed to annoy everybody without exception with this unqualified disgust for every thing connected to Christmas. He spent hours in the library and when one asked him whether he didn't want to celebrate a bit, he always rambled about Christmas being a tired religion made up for people to become lazy and sleepy." She wrinkled her pretty nose. "A way to spent the holidays, really!"  
  
The boy laughed at the description when a strange fact suddenly hit him. "He always stay over the holidays?" he prompted curiously.   
  
The blonde nodded. "He never got along too well with this family", she replied cryptically. Her eyes laid with sudden intensity on him. "Knowing Petunia, I suppose you stay for the same reason?"  
  
Harry's eyes widened in astonishment. "You know my aunt?" he asked with unhidden surprise.  
  
The blonde wrinkled her nose. "We've met once or twice", she acknowledged, an unmistakable expression of disgust on her face. "An awful person! I never understood why somebody like Lily got such a sister!"  
  
"Oh, Petunia is actually the most likable of the lot", Harry returned, his expression matching her easily. "You should see my uncle and my cousin; *those* are the real pains in the..." he stopped himself quickly, but the blonde only giggled before suddenly turning very serious.   
  
"Harry, listen, I know that it is none of my business, but...", she hesitated shortly, biting her bottom lip like uncertainly. "Your family...they never hurt you, did they?"  
  
It took one moment for the boy before he understand what the professor meant. "No! No, really, they never... hit me." He shook his head urgently, shocked by the mere idea. "They barely touched me at all if they could help it."   
  
Professor McGregor looked very thoughtfully. "I see", she answered slowly.  
  
Harry began to feel like a small animal on a lab table under her eyes. He had never really told people about the years with the Dursleys, too afraid of how he would be treated if he did. The admiration he got because of being the Boy Who Lived was burden enough, he did not think that he would be able to stand pity. "It wasn't that bad, really", he finally muttered quietly. "I don't care about them anyway."  
  
The blonde's expression wasn't changing though. "Families are a curious thing", she remarked cryptically, finally tearing her eyes away from him. For one moment she stared into nothing, then she continued in a seemingly unconnected thread, "Do you know that I am the only Slytherin of my family? My parents and my elder sister were all in Gryffindor."  
  
"Really?"  
  
"Yes." A strange little smile appeared on her lips. "Of course they told me that they did not mind my sorting, but somehow I knew right from the beginning that it would not be that easy. I've always been different from them, even before I was sorted into Slytherin, you know." She laughed shortly, but it was a sound without any pleasure in it. "Strange little Morrigan with her fiery ambition and her wild dreams of success and greatness. I don't think any of them had ever truly understood me."   
  
"You must have felt quite bitter", Harry returned sympathetically, knowing just too well how it felt to be outcasted by the own family.  
  
"That, my dear Harry Potter, is about the understatement of the year." In spite of her cheerful tone, her eyes suddenly seemed wary. "I still remember how jealous I used to be of my sister. I was the smarter and prettier of us both, I was more successful than she could have been in her wildest dreams and nevertheless Mona was everybody's favourite. Never me. No matter how hard I tried, everybody would always prefer her. Mona McGregor, the perfect little Gryffindor whom everybody loved."  
  
Harry nodded slowly. "I know what you mean", he returned quietly, remembering the long lonely years at the Dursleys. There had been a time when he had thought that he could win their affection if he just became perfect, if he just did everything they wished. He had been desperately disappointed. "Are you still in contact with your family?" he eventually asked, trying to force the memories back.  
  
She didn't look up. "My father died six years ago, my mother two years after him."  
  
"Oh." Not knowing how to react to this, he asked the first question that came to his mind. "And your sister?"  
  
A sudden jolt visibly stabbed through her as though his question had somehow wounded her very being. "Killed by Death Eaters", she replied shortly.  
  
Harry felt like being hit by a ton of bricks. Oh, he idiot! He thrice-cursed idiot, he had completely forgotten about that! Staring helplessly into the beautiful, now completely empty blue eyes, he desperately searched for words to make up for this unforgivable mistake. "I'm sorry," he finally whispered. "Really, I'm so sorry."  
  
"Don't be", she returned softly as a look of great fatigue settled briefly on her face before she shook it off again. "Well, thank you for helping me with the books anyway."  
  
"No problem." Hesitantly, Harry stood up, still angry about himself. "Do you want me to leave now?"  
  
A soulless little smile appeared on her lips. "You feel everything way too deeply, Harry", she told him softly. Then she stood up abruptly. "Don't close the door, I come with you."   
  
"Oh." Again the boy hesitated, not sure how to act with these constant changes of mood. "Have you forgotten something in the library?" he finally asked. "I could get it for you if you like to!"  
  
"No, nothing like that." The eerie smile widened. "I just thought that I would want to have a word with Severus."  
  
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Standing on the Astronomy tower, Severus Snape felt the first bands of pressure gathering behind his eyes, the sure sign of a buggeringly nasty headache on its way as he tried to drown out the shrieks of a group of first years that had remained at Hogwarts over the holidays. It had not been a good day, not by any means. First, he had corrected the test papers of his sixth year Hufflepuffs, learning that not one of these brain scattered morons had listened to anything he had tried to teach them for the last five years (not that this had come as a great surprise), after that he had run into Trelawney who had told him once more some foolish nonsense about his soon-to-come painful death (no surprise there either) and now as a culmination this unnecessary headache. Oh, and not to forget the ever-present concern about Potter, always stealing his peace lately. He just wondered what would come next.  
  
"So you still come up here."   
  
He tried not to froze too visibly as the familiar feeling of anger of being caught tickled down his spine. "Morrigan", he greeted her blankly.   
  
The blonde chuckled quietly as she walked gracefully to his side. "I live for your enthusiastic greetings, Sev."   
  
Snape's lips thinned as he mustered the woman beside him. In times past he could have discriminated her arrival through the inferno of riots and the stink of death, but it had been too long, and he had become too weak, and he had... forgotten. And there was always a price for the forgetting.   
  
A little smile began to play around the corner of her mouth as she noticed his sour mood. "I somehow thought that I might find you here. Back in school, you and Lil always used to hang around up here", she explained in a light tone that clearly betrayed the cold, merciless calculation in her eyes. Playing with a strand of her gleaming hair, she eyed him openly, the deceitfully sweet smile still on her lips. "Do you remember the time when you..."  
  
"Get to the point or leave me in peace", he interrupted her roughly, unused to words that meant absolutely nothing, and too tired to play this game of wits she was so talented at. These days he was tired of almost everything.   
  
The smile became more honest, but still she stubbornly refused to leave him to his silence. "I don't think that you know what you want," she finally returned, using the words like a weapon as she gently caressed them lovingly to her own cause. That had always been her strategy, and she was the best when it came to games like these. Following his gaze down to the students beneath them, she sighed softly. "Innocent mankind playing in the Garden Eden", she observed in the same light tone as before. "Sheltered and guarded by a loving Godfather, also known as Albus Dumbledore."  
  
He couldn't help but smirk at the comment as he finally turned towards her, taking a momentary risk that went against all of his instincts and immediately regretting it when he looked into her eyes. "And where does this leave us?" he asked, unable to keep his voice under the strict constraints of coldness.   
  
Her smile widened while her eyes remained frightening blank. "Us? To the never quite appreciated roles of Judas Iscariot and the Whore of Babylon, I would think." Eventually she tore her gaze away from the students and stared intently at him, searching for a flicker of the man she once knew in the depths of his eyes. "They are so young", she whispered. "Oh, Severus, were we ever like this? Were we ever this heart-wrenching innocent?"  
  
"We lived in a different time", the dark-haired man replied softly, despite himself feeling the old connection to her, the damn sympathy that had once nearly destroyed his life. "These children...they will never understand what greatness is, not like we did, and frankly I consider it better this way."  
  
"Do you?" The blonde laughed a little, her ocean like eyes fixed on some distant point on the horizon only she could see. Then she sighed deeply. "Ah, Severus, do you recall those days? Lucius, you and me, we were the greatest thing this school ever knew. We had it all, power, reputation, glory and fear."  
  
"Yeah, we had it all", he replied bitterly. "All the fame, all the power and all the despair."  
  
Her smile was bittersweet and somehow melancholic. "Anything has it's price. The friendship with Lily meant peace, sure, but that was not the choice we made."  
  
Severus shook his head, something missing from in the depths of his black eyes, a light that had been there before and was now conspicuously absent. "Was there a choosing?" His voice sounded tired even to him, but the remark was biting, holding a deeply hidden enmity. He hated her; oh how he hated her, this pale butterfly like beauty with whom he now spend his days. But then he loved her also, loved the person that she once had been and even that she was now; his love was as unconditional as hers. "Was there a time when we decided which path to take? I can't remember."  
  
This time her smile was warmer. "Speak for yourself, Sev" she teased him, her voice somewhat softened. It almost seemed a return to the way things were, to the light and incense of childhood. But then she shook her head again, her eyes as distant as before. "I certainly made my choice. Wrong or right, I choose and I never felt regret."  
  
He didn't answer to this but followed her gaze once more to the wide expanse of the garden which now laid in perfect silence before them. Everything was quiet, and at peace, but in the same time Snape couldn't help but feeling tortured.  
  
What could be more of a purgatory than silence when within the silence you were prey to all the demons of your past, the regrets of your present and the uncertainty of your future?  
  
Unwillingly he shook his head, feeling how the sudden movement increased his pain. "Dammit."  
  
"Headache?" she asked softly. "Why the hell don't you take a potion against it?"  
  
"Mind your own business, Morrigan!" he snapped, feeling the magic of the moment vanishing. Eying her angrily, he finally regained his composure. "What are you doing here, anyway?"  
  
Still she smiled. "Obviously I wanted to see you."  
  
"I didn't mean the Astronomy Tower", he shot back, annoyed at her calmness. Shaking his head angrily, he snorted loudly. "But then you probably don't know yourself why you have taken the Defence Against the Dark Arts Job. As I know you, you have probably seen the advertisement in the Daily Prophet and spontaneously decided to make my life a living hell by coming here to torture me!"   
  
She arched an eyebrow, obviously amused at this statement. "Could be right", she admitted. The words are punctuated with a wink and a sparkling grin, the gesture tinged with the love and hatred that had remained of their shared life. "But then I am getting a good idea of what I am doing here."  
  
His black eyes laid with frightening intensity on her, before he suddenly sighed heavily. "Why, Morrigan?" he asked tiredly. "Why this all?" He swept a hand out in an all-encompassing gesture, indicating the world, them, heaven, hell. Life and death.   
  
She paused, caught off guard, and for a moment he believed to see a softening in her countenance that hadn't been there before. "I could ask you the same, you know", she said after a while, her voice tired, but at peace. As much at peace as she could be, anyway. Resting a weary head on his shoulder, she looked down at the gardens beneath them. "But even if we would tell each other our deep dark secrets, what sense would it make? Truth, after all, is a rather biased thing."   
  
He smirked sadly, letting his fingers trailing through the golden silk of her hair, admiring the way it gleamed in the sun. "Of course it is. How else could we bring ourselves to believe it?"  
  
Caressingly she touched his fingers. "I've missed you, Sev."  
  
He hesitated for one moment. Then he gave in. "I've missed you, too."  
  
Standing there in her warm embrace, Severus realized resigned that she hadn't answered his question but he knew that he would not push her further. It has always been this way with them. There were rules that both observed, boundaries they did not cross. Even in the face of death.  
  
Her smile was less burdened than before, but now carried regret as she trailed a light kiss on his mouth. "I think you are a hypocrite, Sev", she informed him in a carefree tone, watching him for a reaction almost curiously. "You admit that you missed me and in the same time you refuse to acknowledge the past we once shared. The persons we were and still are."  
  
Despite the wariness within him, the Potions Master still managed to summon the energy to glare at her. "You are the one to speak, Morrigan!" he snarled sarcastically, freeing himself out of her arms. "Always playing the sweet little girl so that mummy and daddy won't be disappointed in you. Isn't this role becoming fucking boring with the years?"   
  
"I'll have you know that it is a hell of a lot more productive than holing up here and brooding like an overgrown bat over the past", she shot back in sudden fury like always refusing to see the things which did not suit her.   
  
As they tried to stare each other down with exactly the same hateful expression in their equally cold eyes now, their dislike of one another was naked for one moment, invitingly so, for they both knew that they were at last honest to each other.  
  
* Lily, you know how much Morrigan means to me, but please understand that you cannot trust her completely. She would carelessly cut you and laugh while you're bleeding when she's in the mood for it and I'm not joking *  
  
The blonde was the first to regain her composure. "My poor Severus", she said softly. "So broken, so lost. Love must have been a Slytherin, don't you think?"  
  
With these words she turned around and left him alone, never looking back.  
  
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Heading back to the familiar comfort of his dungeons, Snape let himself sink in old memories of the days he had spent together with Morrigan in this place what seemed a lifetime ago. How the blonde had worn her beauty like armour. Daughter of fire and flames behind the face of heaven's most innocent angel. Even after all the years he could still recall the few times they had been together as if it were yesterday, could still recall the way he had felt almost clumsy next to her self-assured need. Grave soil and bits of crisp, broken flowers on the ground where they had laid down, taste of salt and desire on their skin. But loneliness, he added wistfully, loneliness had never been assuaged in their embrace. In the contrary, it had been doubled, multiplied with every moan, every stolen graze of fingertip on flesh.   
  
Perhaps, he admitted to himself, perhaps it could have been different, could have been - his face twisted - comfort, if only he had been a bit less self-absorbed, less self-destructive and not so scandalously bitter. If only she had tried not to act like a cunning manipulative bitch but like the friend she had once truly been to him before all this madness started. Instead they had used each other; Snape because he had needed someone to fill the void Lily had left in his life and Morrigan because using people was what she did best. But as it had turned out, being lonely with someone else was even worse than being lonely by oneself.   
  
And then Voldemort had stepped into his life. Voldemort who had chosen him for his weaknesses as much as his strengths, because he had foolishly assumed that they would make him easier to control. And for a while, it had been that way. Snape had been ruled by his need and his hunger, and in the name of sating that fierce desire, he had been quite...  
  
He shook his head in rough denial, feeling how the movement increased the ache. For one moment he shut his eyes, then he continued his path.   
  
Morrigan was right of course he could just brew himself a pain numbing solution - he was Hogwarts´ Potion Master for Merlin's sake! - but somehow he had stopped to mind the pain a long time ago; he had learned to accept it, to deal with it, to enjoy it, even, sometimes - admittedly in a sick sort of way. Suffering and desire, the best teachers one could have wished for had taught him that there was no difference; Voldemort, Lucius, Morrigan and least but not last Lily Evans.   
  
Oh Lily, can you see us from wherever you are now? Can you see us tumbling on this blood-stained way, hoping that it will lead to salvation while at the same time fearing that we head towards hell?  
  
He could still remember Lucius smiling wistfully, saying, "Nothing quite as attractive as pain" in a tone as if he were telling the world some sort of fucking revelation. How Morrigan had laughed at these words. "That's what it is all about", she had said after regaining posture. "We are not in love with each other. We are in love with the pain."  
  
And she had been right like always.  
  
Lucius. Morrigan. Himself.  
  
He knew now that the bond between them had nothing to do with embraces, chaste or lust-filled. It had neither been about life nor soul. It had not been about love or friendship. It had been about pain.   
  
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Author's Notes:  
  
I have to admit that I'm rather nervous about what you think about the conversation between Snape and Morrigan. It was kind of hard to write it because I didn't want to give to many hints about the soon-to-come end of the story and now I really need some back-up. Please!  
About my comparison with Judas and the Whore of Babylon; I just thought that Judas as the prototype of the spy and traitor would suit Snape. Concerning the whore...well, it seemed appropriate. Let me know what you think about it! 


	11. Adorable Sorceress, do you love the Damn...

Alexis Lee ~ Brilliant! That's exactly the way I wanted Morrigan to appear! Especially the line "A devils angel in her own private hell. A hell she longs to share" pegs her perfectly!

Enahma ~ A happy ending? Well, everybody has a different definition on happiness, right ^^

Ophite68 ~ The Whore of Babylon and Morrigan...well, I think that Morrigan is quite a "whore" in many ways. Since her schooldays when she dated Ravenclaws in order to get them to write her homework, she always used her beauty and charm shamelessly for her own personal gain, not caring the slightest about right and wrong. It is her personal view of the world that you should use all the weapons you have to make your own way, regardless of the prices you pay. And as she showed in the last chapter, she did not even hesitate to sleep with Lucius in order to gain personal fame at Hogwarts. And yet she is used by men as much as she uses them. I am convinced that she would prefer a normal love life, but this is not the role others want her to play. They want the carefree, flighty blonde and so she wears this mask although it slowly destroys herself. 

I hope that answers your question ^^

Isidra ~ Kein Review? Ich hoffe, dass heisst nicht, dass Du das letzte Kapitel furchtbar fandest?!?!

All other Reviewers ~ THANKS A LOT! Nothing helps as much as feedback!

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Chapter 11: Adorable Sorceress, do you love the Damned?

Flashback 4: 

"But how is she?" James prompted urgently. "Will she be alright?"

Madam Mayfair, the current mediwitch at Hogwarts, shook her head in mock desperation. "As I told you about ten times in the last five minutes, Potter, your girlfriend just needs a bit of sleep and she will be herself again tomorrow", she returned dryly, her brown eyes sparkling in sardonic amusement. "Is there something else I can do for you or will you kindly let me get back at my work now?"

He wouldn't be James Potter if he let this opportunity pass by. "Well", he began with his most charming smile. "I wondered if it would be possible for me..."

"To see her?" Madam Mayfair continued his sentence. When he nodded urgently, she sighed resigned. "I suppose", she returned grumpily. "But Potter? Tell Mr Snape to get a bit of rest himself; he certainly looks as if he needed it."

James, who had already turned around to storm into the hospital wing, stopped dead in his tracks. "Snape?" he echoed, surprising himself with the sharpness of his voice. "Do you want to say that Snape is with her?"

The older woman arched an eyebrow at this open display of hostility. "Indeed", he acknowledged with a nod. "He came by because of a headache and when he saw Miss Evans sleeping, he suddenly got all concerned. Asked me if she was alright and if he could do something to help, so I told him to remain with her for the case she wakes up." The intelligent brown eyes softened a bit. "Say what you want, but in contrast to you Gryffindor rowdies, the Slytherin boys are all real gentlemen!"

In any other moment, James would have shot back some sarcastic Anti-Serpent remark, but now he only nodded absent-mindedly. "I see", he muttered softly, before turning around to the hospital wing again. "Thank you, Madam Mayfair. I'll tell Snape."

Not noticing the astonished look on the older woman's face, he finally entered the room before him, a frown on his forehead.  

Snape. 

Well, one thing was sure, no matter how many years passed, he would never understand the Slytherin boy. They had disliked each other right from the moment when they had painfully collided into each other on the Hogwarts´ train on their first school day, but ever since James had saved the other one's life, the traditional loathing had turned into something far more lethal from Snape's side. When he had asked Lily, probably the only person walking the face of earth to comprehend the greasy git´s way of thinking, about this paradox, a very strange look had graced her flawless face for one moment. `It's his pride´, she had eventually answered, shortly like always when she spoke about one of her former best friends, ´He lives because of your mercy and this he will never forgive you.´ 

James shook his head. Not that he doubted his girlfriend's judgement concerning the overgrown bat, but this was absolutely ridiculous. Or more precisely, he corrected himself with a smirk, absolutely Slytherin – Just like it was absolutely Slytherin as well to sit at the bed of a girl whom one had first most cruelly abandoned and then ignored for almost two years! 

His lips thinned as his thoughts returned to the matter at hand. How the hell dared the git to approach Lily after all the misery he had caused her? 

He felt a hot stream of rage bubbling up in him as his temper began to spark like starved dry tinder. Although he and the red-haired witch were a pair for now almost one and a half year, although Lily had told him on countless occasions that she loved him, his stomach still curled in a painful mixture of fury and jealously whenever he thought about the intimacy she had once shared with Severus. By Merlin, the thrice-cursed idiot had meant so much to her that he had been able to make her cry!

Unconsciously his hands formed into fists when he remembered the expression on her face the day Snape had broken up with her. He had never before or afterwards seen her so broken, so heart-wrenching desperate. If Severus thought that he could hurt her again, he would... 

Consumed with righteous anger, he finally stormed into the room, ready to throw the first curse at the Slytherin that would cross his mind. However he stopped dead in his tracks as he finally caught sight of Snape.

His eyes widened.

Sitting on the edge of Lily's bed, bare inches away from her, Severus´s black eyes laid with unhidden emotion on the sleeping girl, with a look as if the sight caused both heartbreaking pain and fleeting happiness in him. James's anger puffed away. He had never seen a more painfully honest and open expression on anyone's face, least of all on Snape's. 

His eyes wandered to his girlfriend who, deeply asleep, was oblivious of her former love's presence. James felt himself soften like always when he set his eyes on her. His Lily, his wonderful, perfect, beautiful Lily. Her head cradled on a nest of her own gleaming red hair, her face drained of all passion, she resembled a little girl, unmarked in her freshness and her innocence yet deep within some fairy world of her own imagination. She was all he could ever wish for, all he could ever want and although there was a part of her which he simply could not grasp, a darkness that was beyond his reach, just being in the same room with her made him melting with happiness.

He wondered what Snape felt when looking at her.

Remaining in the doorway, James watched his arch-nemesis reaching out his hand to the girl and noticed astonished that it was actually shaking. Like Snape was scared of what he might do to her or what she might do to him. But although his touch was hesitant, it was obvious that Lily found comfort in it; when he brushed back the flaming locks from her forehead and ran his hand through her hair almost reverently, she leant trustfully into the touch, reacting to Snape as if he were the one thing in the world that could make everything okay, one of the most beautiful smiles James had ever seen sweeping across her face. 

Suddenly he couldn't stand the sight any longer. He coughed quietly to make himself noticeable.

Snape jerked his hand away as if he had been caught on the stage of crime. "Potter", he mumbled, somewhat abashed at the sight of him. His black eyes blinked nervously several times. "I didn't mean to..." 

"You didn't mean to do what?" James returned with false ease. „You didn't mean groping my girlfriend when she couldn't defend herself?"

Snape didn't answer to this, but only lowered his gaze the ground as though he were a prisoner in a courtroom, facing judge and jury. Regarding him a bit closer, James noticed in shock how terrible the boy looked. The greasy black hair was lank, his skin even paler than usual with a kind of sickly tinge to it and dark rings around his eyes suggested that he hadn't slept properly for at least a week. "Are you alright, Snape?" he asked without thinking.

A humourless little smirk appeared on the thin lips as the other looked up again. "Why would you care?"

James stared down at him, silent for one moment. Finally he pointed towards Lily. "Because she does", he answered quietly, a hint of bitterness echoing in his voice. "She never says, but I know she does. In spite of everything you have done to her, she will never stop caring for you." 

Even when he was still speaking, his heart already began to pound painfully against his chest. It was true, he realised, a part of Lily would always belong to Snape, even if the Slytherin ignored her for the rest of their lives. The thought hurt almost more than bearable.

But Snape didn't look triumphantly. In the contrary, his shoulders seemed defeated, burdened with a load far too heavy for him, while he bit his lips almost violently. „I'm sorry", he suddenly said, his voice strangely hoarse, and James didn't know if the words were addressed to him or to the sleeping girl on the bed. „I'm so sorry."

„That really helps", James deadpanned wearily, his eyes fixed on the other boy's face. 

For one moment nobody of them spoke.

„Why have you left her two years ago?" James finally broke the silence. „I know that you loved her, everybody could see this. So why?"

Again, Snape avoided his gaze. „Things change", he muttered quietly.

The Head Boy snorted derisively. "Oh, do they? So what the hell are you doing here?" 

To his blatant surprise, the other did not snap back with his usual sharp tongue, but simply continued to stare at the radiate girl before him, a twinge of something akin to sadness in the back of those unfathomable black eyes, while his hands were folded resignedly in his lap. "Sometimes they change so much you feel like you've come full circle and back to a place you've been before", he eventually answered quietly.

Letting out an exasperated sigh, James finally sat down in the seat opposite to Snape's. "You and Lily. Why can't any of you two just be plain and forthright when asked a question?" When he got no answer, he shook his head calmly. "You have no right to be here, do you realize that?"

The Slytherin nodded defeated, his eyes staring fixedly on one of the other hospital beds. "I know."

"No, you don't!" For one moment James was afraid of having woken up Lily with his loud voice, but as the girl simply continued to sleep peacefully, he repeated in a quieter voice, „You don't! You have not the slightest idea how much hurt you caused her, no idea how much she cried for you, so don't give me this „I'm sorry" shit!" 

Snape's eyes glazed in a deadened look at this. When he finally lifted his face to James's sight, the other boy was astonished by the maturity set in it. The cold, sneering face he knew was replaced by a face set with exhaustion, wariness and resignation. And somehow James understood that this wasn't the Severus he knew from class, not the heartless git who always tried his best to make his life hell, but the boy his girlfriend had once fallen in love with. "Take care of her, will you, James?" Snape finally said in a tired voice. "Love her like I do." Flinching slightly, he quickly corrected himself, "Like I did."

James just stared at the other boy, his forearms laying limply on the arms of his chair. "It's not the same, Severus", he finally returned, his voice matching Snape's wary tone easily. "She'll never love me like...like she loves you."

´Like she loves you´...The thought went on and on like a nasty children teasing.

Snape looked blankly at him for a moment before he finally sighed resigned. "Not that I am keen on admitting this, but on that point you're wrong, Potter." 

„How do you mean this?"

Brushing another fiery lock out of the sleeping girl's face, his eyes all tenderness and concern again, Snape smiled shortly. "I have seen the way she looks at you, you know", he answered quietly. „The way her eyes lit up whenever you come into the room. She loves you very much. Maybe she doesn't realise it herself, but deep inside she had always longed for someone like you, someone light and carefree unlike herself." A mirthless laugh escaped his mouth. "Who knows, if you had just been honest with her about your feelings all along, Lily probably never would have picked me."

"You don't believe this yourself," James muttered bitterly under his breath.

Snape looked at him again, his eyes all of a sudden dark and mournful again. "No, actually, I don't", he replied simply.

The two sat in silence for a bit, listening to the birds outside singing an 

infuriatingly buoyant, carefree song.

Eventually Severus exhaled tiredly and stood up to leave. A last look on the gleaming girl in front of him, he nodded his goodbye almost imperceptibly "Adorable Sorceress, do you love the Damned?" he whispered softly. As he noticed the uncomprehending look on the other boy's face, he just rolled his eyes. "That's Baudelaire, Potter, don't tell me that you've never heard of him."

James blushed. "Well actually..."

Murmuring something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like "stupid ignorant", Snape shook his head in mock resignation while he rearranged his rumbled robes. Before he left, he shot James a last glance out of unreadable black eyes. "If you ever hurt her, Potter, I will kill you for certain."

James returned the gaze steadily. "Likewise", he replied.

********************************************************************************

Snape couldn't believe it. He simply couldn't believe it, but although he had been absolutely determined to avoid the annoying feast this year, here he was, sitting in the Great Hall on Christmas Eve to ´enjoy the season´ as Albus had put it. Throwing a dark glance over to a disturbingly merry Dumbledore, he inwardly accused the Headmaster to use black magic on him to make him comply with all his wishes and requests. He only hoped that he could escape back into his dungeons before the old fool encouraged the brats to sing one of those foolish Muggle tunes everybody took so frightening much delight in. "I wish you a merry Christmas", just burn them all to hell!

"Is something wrong with you, Sev?" The blonde at his side suddenly asked with wilful naivety. "You look so depressed."

He shot her his deadliest glare. „Thank you for your concern, Morrigan, but let me tell you that I have never enjoyed myself as much as tonight", he shot back, his voice heavy with sarcasm. „If only you chose to take another seat, far, far away from me, I would actually believe myself to be in celestial regions."

She smiled mischievously and like so often her beauty burned right into his soul. „But Sev, I thought you didn't believe in heaven", she retorted gently, her angelic blue eyes shimmering like jewels in the bright candle light. „I thought that we lived in hell here on earth and would go to purgatory straight after death."

Muttering something indefinable under his breath, the Potions Master returned his attention to his dinner, very aware that the blonde's perfectly cold blue eyes still rested on him.

He didn't know what Morrigan was up to these days, didn't even want to think about it, but knowing her, he feared the worst. 

Frowning he recalled how he had visited her in her ridiculously decorated rooms short after their fateful encounter on the Astronomy Tower. Not quite knowing what to say, he had begun another - very deserved - tirade about the foolish ribbons hanging everywhere on the walls, while she had only been staring at him with mild interest. _"Locked together in hatred",_ she had said after he had finally come to an end, her voice infused with softness. _"But you could end it. Oh, don't look at me like that, we both know that you could do it, I am too weak to fight you, too frail. And I wouldn't resist you, Severus, I swear I wouldn't."_

The words had been like a slap into the face._ "Why the hell are you saying this, Morrigan?"_

_"Because I'm done with grief!"_ she had all but hissed the words at him, violent frustration reflecting itself on her beautiful face. _"Your evil is that you can't be evil, but I won't suffer this any longer! If you don't end it, then I will!"_

He shook his head in dreadful anticipation. All this time he had depended utterly upon her coldness, her absolute lack of pain, but pain was what she had shown him back then, undeniable pain. And he couldn't even imagine what her agony would cause her to do.

Perhaps it would be the best to speak to Albus, he thought warily, Merlin knew that he should have done so right from the beginning on. But he had been weak, weak and so goddam lonely, and he had wanted someone who really knew him, somebody who understood him truly without condemning him for it. And like always, he had closed his eyes before the events to come.

"A sherbet lemon, Severus?" Dumbledore suddenly interrupted his thoughts, still this disturbingly merry expression on his face. 

Snape looked over at the Headmaster with not exactly a look of approval. It was his last idea to put one of those ridiculous pieces of candy, of which Albus had become fondly attached over the years, into his mouth.

"No thanks, Headmaster. I'd prefer not." 

He sneered to himself as Dumbledore turned his attention back to the students. No, of course he wouldn't tell Albus anything, he knew this as well as Morrigan did. Albus had given him a second chance when all he had deserved had been Azkaban or worse, so how could he give away Morrigan? Morrigan whom he still loved, no matter how much he hated her at the same time. 

To his own surprise, he found himself empty of regret at the thought.

His eyes fell on Harry, who sat together with Glory Caulfield, obviously in deep conversation with the pretty girl. When their gazes finally met, the boy winked at him, a broad smile on his face and unwillingly, Snape felt his expression softening a bit, as he nodded back shortly. He found it impossible to pinpoint the exact time when Potter had become Harry to him, but he suspected that it must have happened during one of his visits when he had been distracted and not thinking clearly. But somehow he could not help but feeling that it suited the boy he knew now better. Harry, such a simple, honest and disturbingly innocent name; Lily had not chosen it for nothing.

Of course he would never admit this, not even under the heaviest torture. Neither would he acknowledge the fact that he had come to enjoy the boy's occasional visits in his dungeons. It somehow felt natural by now to see this shock of wild black hair standing in his doorframe, the vibrant green eyes burning softly behind the trademark glasses and a hesitant little smile on his face. Of course, Snape would never encourage him for conversation, but he always felt a hot stream of something disturbingly akin to joy when the boy began to tell him some foolish nonsense about the letters he got from his friends or the books he read at the moment while he himself was searching through his shelves as if he didn't know exactly where the vials of Dreamless Potion laid. It almost felt as though he had finally, through her son, gained Lily's forgiveness for his betrayal of their love.

„The two are cute, aren't they?"

The familiar feeling of anger of being caught tickled down his spine. „Forgive me, Morrigan, but aren't you too old for such adolescent register?" he deadpanned sharply. „And in addition to this, I absolutely cannot see why two teenagers acting on their hormones get you all sentimental."

A little smirk appeared on Morrigan's flawless face. „Well, they remind me of a pair I once knew, lost a long time ago", she returned sweetly, although the expression of her eyes was perfectly cruel. „Whenever I see the two of them together, I can't help but thinking of..."

„Don't!" Snape interrupted her sharply. Then, far quieter, „Please don't!"

For one moment she was silent as though the pain in his voice had taken her by surprise. „I'm sorry", she finally said with heartfelt sincerity. A sad little smile appeared shortly on her lips, but in one moment she was looking past him like someone listening for faint, important music. „So very sorry", she repeated quietly, though not addressed to him this time.

And like always he chose the safety of blindness.

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Author's Notes (yeah, more ones):

- The next chapter will be the story's showdown, only followed by a short epilogue. Since university started again (and because I want the final to be good), I might take a little more time than usual. Just don't forget me. Oh yes, reviewing might help to speed my muse up as well ^_~

- The verse, Snape quotes at Lily's bed, is from Baudelaire´s poem "The Irreparable", which just screamed „SNAPE" to me. Here is one extract: 

"Is one able to light the black and muddy skies?

The hope that shines in the windows of the Inn

Has blown out, passed away!

Without moonlight, to find lodged within

The martyrs of a wicked way!

The Devil has extinguished all the windows of the Inn!

Adorable sorceress, do you love the damned?

Do you know the irremissible?

Do you know Remorse, whose arrows venomed

Take our hearts as their goal?

Adorable sorceress, do you love the damned?

The Irreparable gnaws, with its blighted tooth

Our soul, that pitiful monument,

And often he attacks, like a termite, from the root,

Wearing down the building through the basement."


	12. For whom the bell tolls

Chapter 12: For whom the bell tolls

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Originally, I wanted this to be the last chapter, but since I got the worst writers block on it all the time, I decided to split it into two halves. So please enjoy the first part of "For whom the bell toll"! 

Oh yes, another thing: I've written an Harry Potter one-shot called „Cursum perficio" I highly recommend you to read and to review (in other words: pleasepleaseplease)

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Harry hummed happily to himself when he left the Great Hall after the feast, his green eyes burning brightly behind the characteristic glasses.

This definitely had been one of the most splendid Christmases of his life! Not only that the tortured look on Snape's face when Dumbledore had talked them into singing "Oh come all ye faithful" had been worth a fortune, he had also actually managed to give Glory her Christmas present without turning as red as an tomato, a scenario he had feared for the last four days.

The boy had to grin when he recalled her speechless face at the sight of the snake-shaped silver bracelet he had given her. At least the endlessly long afternoon he had spent in Hogsmeade searching for the elusive present hadn't been a total waste; after a moment of silence, she had even wrapped her arms around his neck and fiercely kissed him on the cheek, before quickly turning around, admiring the way the jewellery became alive whenever one reverently ran one's fingers down it. A crimson blush appeared on his face when he recalled the sensation of the soft lips on his flesh. Yes, definitely a splendid Christmas...

Passing the entrance to the Astronomy Tower, he suddenly stopped dead in his tracks, a spontaneous idea popping into his head. Hadn't Snape told him that his mother had sneaked out up there almost every evening when she had been at school? A mischievous little grin appeared on his lips. Perhaps finding out the reason why would be the perfect way to end this evening! 

Making sure that nobody was nearby, he quickly opened the door to the tower's entrance and sneaked into it, curiosity shining brightly in his eyes as he began to climb the countless stairs before him. Of course he had been on the tower about hundred of times the last five years for his Astronomy lessons without noticing anything special about the place, but then he was usually more interested into getting to bed than into paying attention to his surroundings whenever Professor Sinistra held her boring lamentations on patterns in the middle of the night, so that didn't say too much.

Reaching the outtrance to the platform, he finally emerged into the freezing night and found himself holding his breath at the sight that awaited him there. 

So beautiful.

A strange feeling prickled up the boy's spine as he wrapped his cloak tightly around him and wandered down the chilly, empty platform out to its end. The stars, glowing so brightly that they nearly hurt the eyes, seemed closer than usual, so close actually that Harry felt as though he could reach out his hand and pluck one from the sky. 

His eyes closed briefly and he shivered in the growing cold, for one moment experiencing the same light, dreamlike feeling he knew from his dreams of Tom Riddle. How fragile all those tiny lights were, hanging before the black oblivion as though ready to be plunged into the darkness, how weak...

"Nice night, don't you agree?"

Startled, Harry jerked around, catching sight of a figure standing by the doorway, not exactly blocking it, but unmistakably there, half-hidden by the shadows and her midnight blue robe. "Pro...Professor McGregor", he stuttered stunned when he had finally recognised her. "What are you doing...I mean I didn't notice..."

"Clear nights always draw me out", she explained casually, pouring her long blond hair over her shoulders like a golden waterfall. "And don't worry, I certainly won't spoil your Christmas by taking points from you just because you follow the same desires as I myself."  

"Thanks", he muttered under his breath, despite himself feeling nervous about her presence. He did not know what it was, but for already the whole week he couldn't fail to notice something strange about the blonde, some constant hungry expression in her beautiful blue eyes that never failed to make him blink away when their gazes met. 

He watched her carefully as she moved to the parapet where he was standing, unable to explain the sudden feeling of dread that sat like a lump in his stomach. "Did you know that the Astronomy Tower was your mother's favourite place when she was still at school?" she broke his reverie, her voice so soft that he scarcely heard her. Staring out into the blackness before her, her face a blend of contrasting shadows in the moonlight, a melancholic expression settled briefly on the delicate features. "She could spent whole insomnia-plagued nights hidden away up here, watching the moon rise, trace its path across the sky and finally set as morning dawned. When I heard of her death, I began to pick up this habit; somehow I felt as though I wouldn't lose her completely if I did so."

Harry let his head bow, feeling tangled stands of untidy black hair falling across his face. "Professor Snape told me", he acknowledged quietly. "That's why I came here in the first place. 

"Severus told you?" the blonde repeated softly, her cool blue eyes glittering strangely but never breaking their contact with Harry's. "Can I take this as a sign that you two are getting along better by now?" 

Harry tried to swallow against the sudden, unqualified panic that began to rise in his throat. Dear Merlin, he was really getting paranoid! "That's...you see, I...."

A barely perceptible smile on her lovely lips as she saw his distress. "Your mother would have appreciated this, I'm sure", she muttered more to herself than to him. "She loved both of you so very much." 

"Did you often come up here with her when you were still at school?" he eventually asked weakly, trying to hide his unexplainable nervousness, the feeling of dread that increased with every minute. 

"Only in the early days of our friendship. Later on when Sev and Lil..." Tearing her eyes away from him for a moment, she stared once more blankly at the black emptiness before them. "It's a strange feeling when your two best friends suddenly fall in love with another", she eventually continued after a while, her voice very quiet. "One moment, you are still the Unstoppable Trio that shares their everything, the next moment you feel guilty because your simple existence disturbs them. The next moment you are utterly alone."

*When your two best friends suddenly fall in love...*

Harry froze, feeling his heart turn to something heavy and cold, a horrified expression growing on his face despite his best attempts to stop it.

Snape and his mother. Snape and his mother had been...

Observing his reaction watchfully, a playfully cruel little smile appeared on the blonde's full lips. "Didn't you know?" she asked with the utmost softness. "Well, I'm sorry to shutter your illusion about the perfect love between your parents, but I guess it's time to grow up for you, little lion. The entire wizarding world isn't perfect or good - barely anything is anymore." 

For one moment there was complete silence between them. Silence and nothing but the weight of her stare.

"I think I better go inside", the boy muttered weakly after a moment, his voice barely audible. "If you excuse me now." 

Snape and his mother...

"I'm sorry, darling, but I don't think I will do so." Her voice sounded very as though she were trying not to frighten him with her words, but staring into her perfectly, mercilessly cold eyes the boy couldn't suppress a shudder, a feeling of some horrible dread clawing its way up his throat while his scar began to tingle in sudden alarm. "Professor, please, I really..." 

"Do I distress you, boy?" She was now only inches away from him, so close that he could almost feel her body heat. "Do I scare you?" Her voice was as clear and sweet as ever, but the hungry expression of her delicate face let a shiver run over the boy's spine.

"No." His own voice seemed to be coming from miles away, while his forehead began to pound in merciless bolts of blinding pain.

What was going on here? What the hell was going on here?

The cobalt blue eyes stared back at him intensely, their colour deepening into an impossible near-black as though they were drifting into the depths of his soul. "I think you're lying", she eventually retorted, her tone casual but her eyes still glazed with unfulfilled need. "Watch yourself, Harry, this is quite a Slytherin trace and you really can't afford to become even more like us than you already are, do you? I mean what would your Dumbledore say if his chosen saviour, his innocent little Christ Child, fell to the dark?" 

He stared helplessly at her. _Oh God, let this be a dream, don't let this be real. Pleasepleasepleaseplease..._

She smiled slightly derisively at the sight of his chalk-white face. "Come on, Harry, you don't want to tell me that you enjoyed this silly charade the headmaster made us gone through tonight, do you?" She wrinkled her nose in contempt. "By Merlin, the man may be a great wizard, but he's as naïve as a first year Hufflepuff - as though the world were perfect, if we just held hands with Muggles and sang foolish tunes about celestial peace. As though he could paint the world in black and white and force everyone to make a choice."

His nails were pressed so hard into his palms that they were beginning to draw blood. "I will go now", he said with all determination he could force into his voice. Eyes fixed firmly ahead, though each fibre of his body seemed attuned to the blonde's every movement, every breath, he began to march determinedly to the door, when a wand was suddenly pointed directly at his face.

For one moment the world seemed to be swimming in front of his eyes while a frozen terror he had never known before pooled itself in his stomach. This, then, was cause of it all and the ruin of everything he thought he'd known and understood about himself and the world.

Staring up at his teacher with terrified widened eyes, he almost shrieked back at the sight of her; the face of a doll from which someone had cruelly ripped the eyes and replaced them with cold blue fire.

"Speaking about choices", she said in a dreadfully calm voice, her wand still pointing at him. "I think I never answered your question how exactly I was marked by Lord Voldemort."

Harry felt something inside of him turning to ice and beginning to break. "No", he whispered. "No..."

But mercilessly she pulled back her sleeve with her free hand, revealing an ugly skull on her pale forearm with a serpent protruding from its mouth like a tongue.

The Dark Mark.

Staring at his nemesis's sign, he had to choke back a brief, hysterical laugh. This wasn't happening. This simply wasn't happening.

"It can't be", he suddenly heard himself whispering into the dreadful silence, a wail of frigid fear mixed with the painful feeling of utmost betrayal raising in his chest. "It can't be!"

She arched a sardonically amused eyebrow. "Why not?" she asked softly.

_Because I trusted you..._

"Your...your sister", he finally stuttered, trying desperately to find a reason for this madness, an explanation that would make everything okay again. "You said she was killed by Death Eaters. You couldn't..."

The coldness of her smile disappeared, making place to a wariness that was in its way equally frightening. "You naive little boy", she returned quietly, her eyes veiled by something he couldn't quite name. "Haven't you understood? I killed Mona."  

His head began to spin frantically as he stepped back from her, floundering in the face of the burning hatred. Blood roared in his ears, pooling and aching in every inch of his body. He could only shake his head before he felt his back hit the solid wall of the parapet. "No, he whispered. "No..."

"Oh yes", she returned with dreadful calmness, a shadow falling over her face momentarily. "Perfect little Mona. The Dark Lord ordered me to kill her when she, acting like the righteous bitch she had always been, refused herself to him, and I followed his orders. And I'll tell you something else, a secret between you and me." He shook his head in frozen horror but she only pressed closer to him, lowering her lids so that her rich lashes almost brushed the delicate curve of her cheekbone. "The secret, Harry, is that I wanted to kill her. That I enjoyed it." Something very akin to a smile crept slowly over her features. "You must know that I killed humans every night back then. I seduced them, draw them close to me, with an insatiable hunger, a constant never-ending search for something... something, I don't know what it was, but none of them meant anything to me. I did not care where they came from or where they would go. With Mona it was different. Mona I hated. Mona I wanted dead."

He jerked back from her as though branded by the coals of hell, wanting nothing more than to escape from this place, from this stranger with Professor McGregor's face, but his legs seemed to have rooted him to the spot and he had a sinking feeling they wouldn't support him much longer. "Why?" he whispered, his voice barely more than a whisper.

"Because she didn't love me", she returned, her tone suddenly still Weary. Moving her head to one side and studying him carefully, a strangely tender smile appeared on her lips. "Let me give you a lesson about the world, Harry: Love and hatred are just two coins of the same medal. You can't experience one without getting to know the other."

And suddenly he saw Tom before him, pale and delicious and so tragically fragile, laying a rose on his parents´ grave, the dark green eyes full of pain and something more. _That's the secret of the universe, that is my cry and my message. There is no one to help us. We are born alone and we die alone. _

Staring at the heart-wrenchingly beautiful woman with the angelic face and the hardened, bitter eyes before him, he suddenly felt an odd mixture of disgust and compassion rising in him. "Professor", he began, trying to keep his voice from shaking. "I..."

He caught his breath as her long slim fingers suddenly reached up and grabbed his chin, tilting his head back. 

"Don't you dare pity me, child!" she hissed hatefully, her tone chilling him to the bone. "Who are you to pity me when you are not better off than me?!" A bitter laugh escaped her mouth. "Your hypocritical Muggle family never touched you, except in revulsion, and your dear friends are much too innocent to understand the feelings you're hiding behind your fragile mask of joy. The only one who ever saw your true face, the only one who ever laid his eyes on you with sincere emotional intent was the Dark Lord, but the bare thought of him makes you reel in agony."

She laughed shrilly, her fingers cruelly biting into his flesh. "But let me tell you something, Harry Potter, something about whose mind-child you really are."

He shook his head in rough denial, the image of Tom flashing before his eyes again. "No..."

But she didn't seem to hear him. Her eyes flashed to the scar on his forehead, a disagreeable smile appearing on her full lips. "As much as you try to deny it, a piece of Voldemort lives in you ever since that fateful night at Godric´s Hollow when he failed the Killing Curse on you." She laughed mirthlessly. "You could be brothers, do you know this? Not only this unspecific resemblance between the two of you at the best of times, but also the same agonizing hunger for any form of family." 

And again he saw the graves, the blood-roses laying on them. _Who could love us, you and me, as we can love each other? _

"The funny thing is that there are certain similarities between the two of us as well", the ragged voice continued above him. A cruel little smile appeared on her lips as she dejected the look of frozen horror on his face. "Oh yes, Harry Potter, we have the same gift for playing roles and wearing a suave, inscrutable mask of amiability. For the world you are but Gryffindor´s Golden Boy, brave and courageous and determined, but there is a black hole at the inner core of you, and everything you have built over it, lacks a foundation. You are no better than me." 

_* Poor darling, all your life you have tried to escape the inevitable. You've tried to be good and light and brave so hard and yet you always knew that a part of you would forever long for darkness and night and sin *_

"That's not true!" he finally found his voice back. Desperately he searched for something, for some salvation. He knew that there was none. "I'm nothing like you. I have my friends. I have my godfather. I have..."

"But don't you understand, Harry?" Laughing low under her breath, her eyes measured him hungrily. "They are but children, all your so-called friends and admires. You soak their love and admiration up like a sun-deprived flower, but deep down you know that this love isn't for real. They don't love Harry, but the Boy-Who-Lived. They don't need the person you are, but the perfection they project onto you. They rejected you mercilessly in the past once and one day, when you fail in your perfection another time, when you reveal the tragic, flawed human that you are, they will let you fall again. We both know this to be true, so don't try to deny it."

As she stopped in her rage for a short intake of brief, Harry heard a harsh strange sound coming out of his throat, quite beyond his control. Staring at her, seeing and not seeing in the same time, he began to shake mercilessly. "Why?" he finally heard himself whisper. "Why are you doing this? Why haven't you killed me long before if this is what you wanted all along?"

She smiled briefly, bowing her head so that her golden curls tumbled down her face like a concealing veil. "You live so bright", she answered him with sudden heart-wrenching sincerity. "The moment I first saw you in the dark corridor this very first night...I still remember how you appeared in my eyes. So much like and yet unlike Lily. All of her innocence and pain and youth and burning green eyes, none of her cool, self-sufficient strength. None of her protection walls." She regarded his chalk white face thoughtfully. "From this first moment on I wondered how it's right for one such as me to be so near to one such as you. I wondered if I had been given a second chance, if I could live in the warmth of your life. But then I realized that it didn't even warm yourself." 

"Professor." His green eyes met her blue ones, searching for some sort of emotion in that heartbreakingly handsome face and finding none. "Professor", he pleaded again, not knowing what else to say. Not knowing how to feel.

She arched an eyebrow. "Such betrayal in one word", her voice purred in his ear, a seductive murmur of consent. "Another theme that repeats itself constantly in my life, it seems. Oh, don't cry, my boy." Laying her pale hand on his cheek, she pulled his face down to hers, drying the moisture on his cheeks he hadn't even known was there with surprising tenderness. "It will soon be over, so don't cry."

But the tears wouldn't stop flowing. Forcing himself to look up to her, he felt them running over his face mercilessly. "Why Voldemort?" he finally asked, his voice barely audible. "How could you submit yourself to him?"

With the utmost gentleness, Morrigan raised her hand and slowly stroke over Harry's scar. "He saw me", she whispered very softly. "From the very first moment when Lily, Severus and me drew his eyes on us with our mindless game, he looked straight through all my masks, all the glitter and false joy and he wanted what he found." She laughed hoarsely. "Oh, he used me as well, I won't deny that, but he wanted me. Not somebody else, but me." 

„And this was enough for you?"

A strange little smile flickered briefly around the corners of her mouth. "Enough for me to follow him everywhere", she agreed tenderly. „From this very first moment on, this was all I wanted. Hateful as he was ...cruel as he was...beloved as he was...beyond any reason and unreason, I wanted to stand at his side through it all. Can't you understand this, Harry? You, who never had anything stable in your life, can't you understand my choice?"

Staring at her bewildered, a dreadful revelation slowly settled down on him. "Then you were weeping for Voldemort that night at your quarters", he whispered in shock. "Not for my mother, but for him."

She smiled bitterly. "Your mother!" Violent frustration rent her face for an instant. "I always thought that she cast this bloody protection spell around you because he was about to kill her! Vengeance, that much I would have understood." She shook her head in defeat, brushing her soft curls against his face in the process. "But he would have let her live! He would not have touched a hair of hers and nevertheless she destroyed him with this double curse of love and death she cast on you. She willingly destroyed *me*!" 

_*Oh, Lily, Lil, Lil, did you hate me this much?*_

"Then she didn't mean anything to you!" At least, shock and hurt embarrassment gave way to such unbridled fury that he thought he would explode from their intensity. "All those things you said about her, all those things you told me, were nothing but petty lies to gain my trust!"

"You didn't understand anything, boy." As though to mock his rage, her eyes laid on him with an odd mixture of sympathy and weariness. "I loved your mother, every minute of every goddamn day of my life. I loved her even when I wished her soul to hell. That's the torture of it." 

"You..."

"Why do you think I haven't killed you long before?" Her voice was painfully calm by now, all emotion hidden under its controlled tone. „You were my best friend's son and I wanted to love you as I loved her, to protect you from all the harm I couldn't prevent her from, but in the same time I wanted to rip you apart." 

For one moment she looked right through him as if he were not there, her face a saccharine, sweet mockery of innocence once again. Then she shook her head, her wand pointing directly at his face again. "And, regarding all those facts, who would be able to tell the victim if I cast the Killing Curse on you now", she finally continued in a soft murmur, watching his eyes widen in terror with dispassionate eyes. "Who would be able tell the greater pain? Because you're under my skin, my beautiful little boy. You're invading me like a cancer every second of every minute of every goddam day. Your very existence is boring down inside me like a thousand little worms, and sucking my soul out of me."  

His head began to spin around as he stared at the wand before him. She was insane. Dear Merlin, she was completely insane. Frantically he looked around himself. He had to run. Somehow he had to try and...

"Crucio!" 

He could hear himself screaming as his nerve endings lit themselves on fire.  

Spots of colour began to dance before his eyes, as he sank to his knees before her, his bones jarring in unbelievable pain and stunned he finally fell against the parapet, moaning softly, eyes drifting half-shut. Through a thick wail of pain and misery, he felt icy fingertips touching his cheeks, cooling the burning there before tracing their way down to the sides of his neck.  

"Yes, close your damnable green eyes so I don't have to see them", he heard her voice near his ears. "Because every time I do, every time you enter the room, I remember. You've stolen my everything, Harry Potter. You and your dear mother have left me crumbled, exposed and huddling feebly on the floor before you the night you destroyed the man I loved and although I flew the country, although I tried to begin a new life without Him, I could never forget. That's my purgatory. And it won't end as long as you are alive!"

_Someone please help me...someone...anyone..._

"But I will not live with this hatred any longer! I will not live with this rage! I cannot. I will not abide it!" For one moment she looked away from him down at her hands, her eyelids quivering as if the slight rise in her voice had disturbed her even more than him, before she turned to face him again. "Tell her...", she whispered. "When you meet her in heaven, tell her that I'm sorry. That I always loved her, in spite of everything I said and did.´" Weariness strived her features once again. "If there is one person who could understand, who could grant forgiveness, it would be Lily."

„Professor, please..."

But she already pointed her wand straight at him again. "Don't think I want to do it", she whispered, and for one moment she was the fragile, angelic being that he knew, too radiant, too full of grace to be anything evil or dangerous. "If there was any other way...but there isn't. I'm truly sorry."

And he believed her.

Closing his eyes in sudden resignation, Harry prepared himself for the flesh of pain that would indubitable come any moment, tearing his soul away from his body, leaving him empty and cold back on the ground, before it would finally be over for good. Before there would be no more pain, no more emptiness, no more danger to others. No more dreams.

And suddenly...

"EXPELLIARMUS!"

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TA-DA!

So now you know Morrigan's deep dark secret - although I fear that I've given out so much hints that it wasn't a secret anymore ^^. All other question will be answered in the following chapter and in the epilogue (but please let me know what exactly you still wish to know so that I can make sure to clear absolutely everything!)


	13. Chapter 12 continued & Epilogue

Chapter 12 continued   
  
He forced his eyes open again.  
  
The first thing he saw was Professor McGregor, still standing on the same spot as before, her arm, now wandless, still pointing into his direction. The beautiful blue eyes were widened in wonder, creating the falsely sweet impression of a doll face, before a barely perceptible smile appeared on her full lips all of a sudden. "Severus", she greeted the black-dressed man in the doorframe who had just disarmed her, her voice gentle as though she was merely inviting him to a tea party, as though they were still children and the world unstained and good. "How foolish of me not to guess that you would come up here on a night like this. It seems that my mind hasn't been on its best form lately."  
  
The Potions Master, to whom Harry's gaze jerked now, was chalk white. His eyes wandered to the crying boy on the edge of the platform and then back to her, a horror too unspeakable for words darkening his eyes into endless black orbits. "Morrigan", he whispered into the chilling coldness, his voice was shaking as though on the verge to break. "Oh God, Morrigan, why?"  
  
Something akin to sad amusement slowly crept over her face. "I would think that you of all people would understand", she returned softly, her whole manner nothing but tenderness. "You and me, Severus, we have both wrapped our arms around Death's neck and we have danced with Him. We have slept and kissed and fucked on that goddamn bed of bones and dead flesh, sharing what becomes the ultimate intimacy. So, my old friend, do you really want to say that there isn't the slightest hint of comprehension flickering in this black hole you call your heart?"  
  
A small flicker of hurt flared briefly in Snape's black eyes, and hid again. Breathing ragingly, he finally regained some of his posture. "Understanding how you could cold-heartedly attempt murder on an innocent child?" he retorted, his voice shaking under the strain to keep it casual. "Never. No matter how black my heart may be." Almost pleading he reached out his hand, the gesture implying helplessness as well as hopelessness. "Morrigan, please, you don't know what you are doing."  
  
Again she smiled, but the softness of her lips was evanescent. She did not answer.  
  
Harry, however, slowly began to understand.  
  
The look of sublime panic in Snape's eyes when he had told him about the blonde's breakdown after their conversation about Voldemort, the way he sometimes stared at her when he thought nobody noticed, this strange mixture of affection, mistrust and pain.  
  
*If you want my advice for once, don't try to understand Morrigan. You would not be the first to fail miserably.*  
  
"You knew", he whispered into the silence, causing both of them to look at him in surprise. A feeling of utmost betrayal was beginning to tingle down his spine. "You knew...and you simply let it be."  
  
Snape almost flinched at the unhidden accusation in these words. "Boy, I swear I didn't know that she would..."  
  
But Harry didn't hear him anymore. His vision began to blurry before his eyes, leading him to the darkness that he had been successfully avoided so many weeks now, that he had almost forgotten.  
  
Betrayed. By both of them. Professor McGregor, who had held him in her arms like a mother, Snape, whose company he had sought so often in the last time, actually beginning to feel comfortable with the sarcastic man, both of them had lied to him, both of them had betrayed his trust.  
  
He shook his head, and kept shaking it. Betrayed. But right before the dark would swallow him completely, he suddenly heard the blonde's clear, melodic voice, soft and loving like he remembered it. "It's not his fault, Harry", she told him gently.   
  
Startled he looked up, but the Professor was not facing him, but the Potions Master, whose expression was revealing total despair by now. "Severus might have chosen the safety of blindness, but regarding all the things the light has already forced him to see in his life, all the tragedy and loss, that's hardly something you can blame him for."   
  
Snape stared blankly back at her, searching something in her eyes and obviously failing to find it. "Morrigan." His voice sounded almost pleading. "Morrigan..."  
  
But she wouldn't listen.  
  
"Do you remember?" she whispered. Her brilliant blue eyes were clouded with the film of her memory, shimmering glassy and almost silvery against the bright light of the stars. "The day we got the Dark Mark? The youngest Death Eaters ever." She laughed shortly, but it was a sound without any pleasure in it. Still her eyes were fixated on Snape. "They told us to be proud of it and I'm sure I at least was, but deep down we both of us knew that it would end in despair, didn't we? Everything we began always did."   
  
The Potions Master's shoulders suddenly lowered in defeat, burdened with a load far too heavy for him to bear. "That's because we always made the wrong choices", he replied simply.  
  
She nodded in tired agreement. "True", she acknowledged, still in the same strangely calm tone. "But at least they were freely made."  
  
For one moment she seemed lost in her memories again, unmarked in her freshness, her beauty, yet deep within some dangerous prison of her own thoughts. "And what choices we made", she eventually mused softly. "Honest, good old-fashioned evil. The ability to crush your enemies. Ambition and kink and everything you promised yourself that you could never have, because mommy and daddy said so. In the end, the Sorting Head had been right when he made us Slytherins."  
  
Snape eyed her intently. "Even Slytherins can choose the light."  
  
Her brilliant blue eyes glittered strangely. "Perhaps", she returned after a while, her voice so soft it was scarcely heard. "You and me, however, couldn't. From the moment on we were sorted into Salazar's House, our fate was sealed."  
  
The Potions Master shook his head, wearily, resigned, stubbornly refusing the truth of these words. "No. *We* sealed it.  
  
That caused her face to soften momentarily, before she sighed once more in soft resignation. "You were always blind when it came to things you didn't want to see", she accused him in a tired voice. "Dammit, Severus, can't you see? You spent your days here in this godforsaken castle, year for year, always hoping that you can change the way things are, that you can prevent your precious children from the fall, the dark, the fallout and blindly you chose to ignore the fact that, in the end, they'll make their choices just like we did."   
  
There was no malice in her eyes, just truth in her word. "Look at you... trying to do what's right. Just like Lily. And where did it leave you two? One is dead and the other one is dying slowly, his soul torn between his long-lost love and his desire to atone."  
  
  
  
Nearly analytically, Harry noted the significant change taking over Snape as she mentioned his mother. His black eyes flickered, undeniable pain hiding itself in their depths, pain and an almost unbearable mixture of sadness and regret, before they suddenly flashed in bright, all-consuming fury. "What did you ever understand about Lily?" He all but hissed the words. "You call *me* pathetic, but just you look at yourself, ignoring everything that doesn't suit you and taking the world with you when you fall! Lily was the better of you, always, and that's what you couldn't bear!"  
  
"I was already wondering when this would come up." Harry couldn't help a mental shiver as she saw the corner of the blonde's mouth curling upward in a faint, blood-chilling smile. "Everything you did in the past, everything you do in the present always centred around our dear red-headed lioness, but let's face the truth for once; no matter how much you loved her, no matter how much this love destroyed you, you couldn't save her. You let her marry another in a futile attempt to prevent her from the fallout, but she died nevertheless. In the end, your sacrifice was for nothing!"  
  
"You heartless bitch!" Snape's voice was nothing but a faint whisper, but Harry shuddered at the venomous undertone in it. The dark eyes were burning in utmost hatred now, the violent rage consuming all of his face. "Lily loved you. Merlin knows that you didn't deserve it, but she would have given her life for you if you had just asked her for it."  
  
The blonde made a little negative gesture, lifting one of her soft little hands in the process. "That's of no importance now", she returned wearily. "Sev, I..."  
  
"Of no importance?!"   
  
Snape's voice did not rise in volume, but it had enough force behind it to stop her in midsentence. "What the hell did you ever understand, Morrigan? It's the only fucking thing that is of any importance!" His hands balled into fists at his side; it seemed as if he had to fight for every breath, as if he felt the heat of his pain burning every single cell in his body. "She's dead, Morrigan, don't you understand this? She is dead because of the damned thing you call Lord and nothing will bring her back! You think you have suffered? You think you have lived in hell for the last fifteen years? Let me tell you something, my dear, you were not the only one who lost his sense of life this fateful night at Godric´s Hollow!" Now his voice rose with every word, until he was actually shouting. "Lily was everything to me, everything, do you hear that! She was the only bloody thing in this godforsaken world that ever mattered something to me and I lost her! I *lost* her!"  
  
"I know." Her voice sounded even more tired before.  
  
"You..."  
  
"And I loved her, too." There was a look of utter supplication on her face that shut Snape up. For one moment she seemed lost, her eyes closed, her face smooth as though all passion were drained away from her. "I've always loved her, never doubt that. She was my best friend. It was just...I simply loved you more."  
  
When she forced her eyes open again and saw the open display on shock on Snape's face, a weary smile shortly strived her features. "Didn't you guess?" she asked softly. "You, who always saw everything so clearly, so separated from all emotion and just through the cold glass of logic, didn't you guess that from the first moment when we two quarrelled in this stupid tutor lesson on, I wanted only you?" She laughed bitterly. "No, of course you haven't. You have been blinded by your own love."  
  
He still stared blankly at her, his fingernail digging so hard into his palms that Harry could see them drawing blood, as though he were blindly and mysteriously trying to calm a pain that he himself did not even begin to understand. "I had no idea", he finally whispered, his voice at the edge of despair. "Morrigan, I had no idea."  
  
She smiled almost reverently. "No, of course not", she replied gently. Eying him gently, her face seemed still all of a sudden, beyond influence, tenderness or concern. "There was a time when I had had hoped, however, when I thought that maybe, just maybe I might be able to give you what you needed. Lily had just married James and you have come to me, to my bed, searching for any form of comfort I could offer and I have thought...", she stared into the vastness of the black sky, sadness mixed with painful resignation creeping over the beautiful features. "But you were never again the same men after you let Lily go. She had been an essential part of yourself and nobody after her was able to take that place. You didn't want anybody to. You preferred the pain."  
  
"Morrigan..."  
  
But mercilessly she continued. "And so did I. I couldn't have you, so I choose to follow a man who saw past the golden locks and the saccharine sweetness, who saw how far into the abyss of dark decadence I had fallen and how much blood and filth I had decorated myself in and who wanted me nevertheless. Wanted me like you never did. I gave him what I had meant to give you because it was the only fucking way left for me."  
  
Snape still stared at her, understanding finally beginning to swim in the depths of his black eyes. "I'm sorry", he said simply.  
  
Her eyes widened shortly at this, and for one moment Harry could see her heart wavering; he could see it, see the lovely youthful lips opening to answer. Her hand already reached for him but then stopped just as their fingers were about to brush.  
  
Hope had died long ago. For both of them.  
  
"You should never have let her go", she finally said, surprising them both with her words. "You were destined to be together in life and to be placed in the same coffin in the end, holding hands. Demented as it sounds, you two belonged that way." Her eyes never turned from his, as a sad smile appeared on her lips. "That boy should have been your son, not James's. I should have been his godmother and perhaps one day I would have accepted, I would have loved him and spoiled him and no darkness would have ever touched us and perhaps there would have been a little bit of happiness for all of us." She stopped shortly, listening to the faint echo of her words, before lowering her head. "But it's too late now. I have seen to much pain, too much suffering for this one lifetime. I'm tired. I'm so tired, and I'm sick and I won't take it anymore."  
  
He stared intently at her. Then he nodded.  
  
A sad little smile graced her lovely, youthful lips for an instant. "Bear me no ill will, Severus", she told him quietly. "We're even now."   
  
Turning to Harry finally, her expression made his heart ache in a painful mixture of desperation and pity. There was no accusation in her eyes, but no regret either. Staying at the edge of the platform in perfect stillness, the tears staining her cheeks, as if all this that had risen to the surface had left her weak and desperate for oblivion, as if the room around her, the persons in it, were not there, she suddenly resembled the loving, fairylike woman he had thought to know again. "I won't ask for forgiveness", she said after a long time of silence, her voice very calm, very in control. "But I advise you to remember my warnings. Not my curses, only the warnings. You are so much like the Serpent's Children, don't make the same mistakes so many of us did."  
  
And suddenly Harry didn't care what she was, or what crimes she had committed in the past, he didn't care her lies or even her attempt to kill him. He only wanted her to remain. "No", he whispered. "Please, Professor, don't..." Violently he shook his head, refusing to believe what he knew would happen. "You cannot...please!"  
  
Gently she shook her head, her eyes soft as though afraid to hurt him with her words. "There are boundaries in life that once crossed cannot be re-gone, Harry", she told him gently. "Just as there are scars that never heal."  
  
And that he understood.  
  
For one very long moment, the three of them stood in perfect stillness on the platform, every one standing on his own but nevertheless building one entity, bounded with ties made of pain, betrayal and, strange as it was, love.  
  
And when she finally turned away from them, when she finally tore her eyes  
  
away and looked at the night sky once again, an air of irrevocably around her, Harry knew exactly what she would do.  
  
And so he closed his eyes and embraced the dark that was suddenly surrounding him, the dark that he had feared so much and that was so comforting to him now, that offered him peace and spared him to see what happened before him.  
  
The last thing he heard before he lost his conscience was the soft cry of pain eluding from Snape's mouth, when he, for once refusing the safety of blindness, saw the fragile body of the woman, who had been his best friend once, his lover after that, and his friend this night again, springing from the platform like a bird somebody had cruelly stolen the wings from.  
  
No, Harry didn't want to see.  
  
Death was so much easier in the dark.   
  
********************************************************************************  
  
Have you risen from the black maw or descended from the stars?   
  
Charmed destiny trails your petticoat like a Dalmatian;   
  
You randomly seed both joy and disaster   
  
And you govern all but respond to none.   
  
You step on the dead as you mock them, Beauty;   
  
Horror is but one of your charming fripperies   
  
And Murder, among your most beloved jewellery   
  
Dances on your proud breast amorous and slippery.   
  
The ephemeral May fly crosses your candle,   
  
Crackles, ignites and thinks: "Bless this blaze!"   
  
The lover bent over his magical belle   
  
Has the air of one dying, caressing his grave.   
  
That you come from heaven or hell, who cares?   
  
O Beauty! For you, artless and frightful monster, I send!   
  
If your eye, your smile, your feet, open the door   
  
To an Infinity I love but can never comprehend.   
  
Of Satan or God, Angel or Fiend,   
  
Who cares? As long as you transcend...  
  
From Baudelaire´s "Hymn to Beauty"  
  
********************************************************************************  
  
EPILOGUE (Shades of Grey)  
  
Life went on.  
  
Somehow it seemed unnatural, unfair against all law, but neither did sun cease to shine the day after her death, nor did the stars hide their faces to mourn her. The world just kept on turning.  
  
*I seduced them, draw them close to me, with an insatiable hunger, a constant never-ending search for something... something, I don't know what it was, but none of them meant anything to me*  
  
The holidays went over and the students came back to Hogwarts where they were told about a tragic accident that had caused their all-time favourite teacher their life. A short amount of time, the whole castle seemed to wrap itself in grief, mourning the death of a carefree and lovable young woman that had never truly existed, but soon the tears dried on the cheeks, soon she became a mere memory.  
  
For Hogwarts, after all, she was just one more Professor for Defence Against the Dark Arts on a very long list.  
  
When the arrival of her replacement was announced three weeks after the incident, Harry had found himself heading to the her old quarters, driven by an urge he himself couldn't quite explain. It hadn't surprised him when he had found Snape there, systematically and quite calmly going through her personal items. Without a word he had joined him, helping him to destroy everything that had belonged to her, the fragile beauty of the porcelain dolls on the shelves, the withered flowers in their elegant vases, the carefully arranged decorations on the walls. Nothing of it was meant for a stranger to touch or possess. Nothing of it was meant to remain when she had gone.  
  
Only when they had come to a photography in a silver frame she had had hidden in her wardrobe, they hesitated in their silent vendetta. A very long time, both of them had just stared at the smiling faces of the three teenagers, two girls and a boy, that waved at them with radiant smiles on their faces, stared at the way the black-haired boy's arm laid on the pretty redhead's shoulder, who in return hugged the blonde in front of her, at the heart-wrenching innocence of the scenery, and suddenly Harry had dissolved into tears without regard for shame or appearance, not caring what the cold, contemptuous man before him would think. But in spite of taunting him, Snape had just drawn him close and wrapped him in his arms to let him weep on his shoulder. Weep until he had no tears left.  
  
But even this moment passed.  
  
And life claimed its rights.  
  
Snape returned to his familiar bitter self, taking points from every student, even from the ranges of his own house as though seeing the trades of the dead in the children before him were more than he could bear. These days, the school was full of rambling against the Potions Master and only Harry did not join the angry chorus. Instead he bore his behaviour like he bore the love blossoming between his two best friends that made him feel like an outsider in their midst. He didn't complain just like Morrigan had never complained, but smiled and laughed in spite the jealousy he felt for their closeness. He played Quidditch and won the Housecup for Gryffindor once again. He began to date Glory, bluntly ignoring the incomprehension of this Housemates and the abyss it created between him and his friends. Sometimes he even came back to the dungeons, never to get himself a Dreamless Potion, but to chat with the snake on the emblem and to listen to the dark secrets she told him. He found that he didn't fear the dark anymore.   
  
Taking all into account, he just went on living.  
  
Late nights, however, when he couldn't sleep, when he felt a peculiar pain in his chest that had nothing to do with dreams or loneliness, he would rise from his bed and walk up to the Astronomy Tower. The stars out there always glittered coldly, but at least they were the same.   
  
Sometimes he met Snape there, a lone figure standing at the parapets and staring at the night sky as though he was accusing it for the misery of a lifetime, but none of them ever said a word on these occasions.  
  
What was there to say, anyway?  
  
Everything was grey and the whole world was soiled by itself.   
  
Love and hatred.   
  
Good and evil.   
  
It was all some blurry shade of grey.   
  
FINIS  
  
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So, that was it. The ultimate end. Definitely no sequel to this one here. I hope you liked it, although it didn't have a happy ending - a great sorry to Enahma here; I had the last few lines already in my mind when I began to write the story (therefore the title ^^) and I just didn't want to alter them. And I very firmly believe that -once more- Morrigan has taken the only way possible for her; I mean she wasn't just temporarily distressed, she was sick with life itself and there was simply no way how she could live on with that. So don't flame me. PLEASE!   
  
Well, I'll stop babbling now and wait anxiously for your respond! 


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